


Kiss Him Back

by Jillypups



Series: Kiss the Girl [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bachelor/ette parties, Bronnaery, Engagement parties, F/M, Family hijinks, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Fluff one more time because, I don't know what else to say, Little bit of Renlas, Little bit of all Starks and their wonderful romances, Romance, Spoilers in the tags I guess, Starks in Sonoita, Wedding Bells, Willas is finally going to catch a break, sansan, the tiniest weest bit of aaaangst I guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 49,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the sequel to Kiss The Girl, about two months where KTG left off. Just... just SanSan in Sonoita, man. Y'all know me and my sappy sickly sweet MO by now I think, haha!</p><p>Sandor is now 37, Sansa is now 24, Genna has recently turned five.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperflowercrowns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperflowercrowns/gifts), [vanillacoconuts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillacoconuts/gifts), [HeyYouWithTheFace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyYouWithTheFace/gifts), [swimmingfox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingfox/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [PICSET TIME](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/109025118698/kiss-him-back-chapter-1-feels)

February 2015

 

The winter morning sunlight is the color of champagne as it filters in through the sliding back door of the main room, and Sansa is hypnotized, mesmerized, swept away by the dazzle and sparkle of light that winks against the crystal beading of her wedding shoes. She’s got her chin in hand, a dreamy half smile on her face as she turns one shoe to and fro, this way and that, sunlight captured and igniting, captured and igniting in staccato waves across the surface of the stiletto. They are prettier than she remembered, having bought them two weeks ago only to immediately shove them under the bed to keep them hidden from Sandor.

 _I’m going to marry Sandor in these shoes,_ she thinks,running her fingertips down the heel before standing with a sigh to rinse out her coffee mug and set it in the sink. It has been a whirlwind since coming home from Spokane, snow on their heels and in their hair as they came back to this sweeping land of sun and sky. He told her the day he proposed that he wanted to waste no time in marrying her, that he’d do it right then and there if he could, but she informed him that these things take time, and so they compromised on a wedding in the summer. It’s why she’s finally unearthed her shoes today, so she can find the perfect dress to match them when she and Margie go shopping up in Tucson.

Margie’s who she expects when the door clicks open, they’ve become that familiar with each other, but when she leaves the kitchen to greet her friend, it is Sandor with a gust of wind against his back, loosening his bound back hair before he slams the door shut and turns, looking at her with mild surprise before he smiles and walks to her. Lady is a trot and circle around him, clever face turned up for a scratch behind her ears before she sniffs his feet and returns to her bed by the sofa. He’s captivating as he always is, a man of purposeful stride and strong shoulders, but there are those damned shoes on the table, and she’s eager to keep them a secret.  _Just until August,_  so where she would normally stop and soak in the sight of his approach, let it jumpstart her heartrate as she anticipates an embrace, a kiss, the drift of his hand down to the small of her back, she edges to the table in an attempt to block them from his sight.

“I figured you’d be on the road by now, sunshine,” he says, sweeping his hands back over his hair, drawing the loosened strands out of his eyes as he walks further into the room. He’s in his blue Pendleton, a dark muted cobalt that makes his eyes stand out in a way that makes her want to whimper, but she’s on a mission and so she steels herself against the pull of him, the draw and tug she feels deep in her belly, high in her heart.

“I figured you’d be at the nursery,” she says lightly with a smile, edge of the table pressed against the backs of her thighs, and she glances quickly over her shoulder to make sure those shoes of champagne dazzle and sunshine spark are directly behind her.

“I needed to get something in the greenhouse,” he says, eyes narrowing as he regards her.  _Dammit, I shouldn’t have looked,_  she thinks, because now he’s grinning, arms folded across the buttoned up plaid of his chest. Sansa sets her chin and lifts it. “What do you got back there, huh?”

“Nothing,” she shrugs, mirroring him when he suddenly leans to the side, craning his neck in an attempt to see around her. She leans with him and now they’re both grinning as he tries to walk around the table and Sansa follows him, maintaining the visual barrier as best she can while she’s laughing.

“Is it a present for me? Is it a big old pile of money?” he asks, pacing to and fro like a panther, feinting left before going right, and she is just able to keep up with him, relying more on knowing him as well as she does than her physical abilities, superior as he is in the latter.

“Quit it,” she says, slapping his hand away when it darts out in an attempt to grab whatever it is he thinks she’s hiding. “Go on, get out of here,” she laughs, lifting her bare foot to keep his advance at bay, pressing it against the firmness of his thigh, his jeans a cool rub against the pads of her toes. He stills immediately, looks down at her foot before sliding his hand under the cuff of her jeans, lightly wrapping his wind chilled fingers around her ankle, making her gasp.

“Big mistake, baby,” he says, pulling her foot off his thigh, hefting her ankle in his hand as he shakes free of her jeans, and she’d squirm out of his grasp if she didn’t think she’d fall to the floor in the struggle. His hand moves up to her calf, burrowing in the bend of her knee as he steps into her, pulling her leg around the trunk of his body, hips a press to hers. “Now you’re mine.”

“Sandor, stop,” she says, but it’s too late, and his eyes widen when he catches sight of her shoes over her shoulder, and she twists her torso to follow his gaze with her own. The sliding glass door is to her left and his right and the guileless sun illuminates them like treasure the color of a blush, a shimmer of peach fuzz hardened to gemstones and glitter.

“What are  _those_ ,” he says as if he has never before seen high heels, has never before laid eyes on such finery. Maybe he hasn’t; she owns no other pair of shoes so extravagantly beautiful, and what high heels she owns rarely come out these days, unless she intends to aerate the packed soil of Sonoita with the puncture of their stilettos.

“My bridal shoes,” she murmurs, and at her words he lets go of her leg to reach for one, though he stops just short to turn his hand over and inspect his dirt-streaked palm, and it makes her smile, this big bad beast of hers with his sun smeared hands in the earth. “Here, let me,” she says, lifting the pair of them by their heels, turning to face him with the shoes between them.

“They’re gorgeous,” he says simply, head bowed as she turns them in the sunlight, as it catches in the minuscule beads and flecks of crystal, flaring up and half blinding in some areas. “Will you put them on?” She looks up and he is gazing at her with not a little mischief, rolls her eyes at the slow spread of a smile on his mouth.

“You weren’t even supposed to see them,” she says, leaning against the table as she slides her foot into one, gaining a few inches of height -  _All the closer to him -_  as she switches feet to slip on the second shoe. She bends at the waist to cuff her jeans so he can see them clearly, and it’s a sort of heaven, getting to walk in them again, to hear the click of heel against the red concrete floor, tiny taps of anticipation, and the contrast of color makes them pop and glimmer all the more for it.

“Very nice,” he says when she walks back to him, voice low and gruff, eyes a slide down her body to the shoes and back up again, and she recognizes all of those things, the combination thereof a very clear sign to Sansa. “Cinderella in her glass slippers, hmm?” He takes a lock of hair between the gentle pinch of thumb and forefinger, watches it slip through his grasp before letting it fall against her shoulder, his other hand a cold-fingered ghost along the V-neck of her sweater. She lifts her hand to cup his face, his beard a scrub and his scars a pebble, so much lovely texture to him, so much to sink into and get lost in, and she’s very nearly there now. Her mind drifts to a day not so far off down the calendar of their future together: Standing in these selfsame shoes on the first of August, standing this close when he will say  _I Do_  and she will say it back, when he will kiss her and she will kiss him back.

 “Sandor,” she says, if only to have the taste of his name on her tongue, but then she’s got the taste of  _him_  by way of a kiss that gives her chills because in a matter of months he will kiss her again in these shoes and it will mean everything in the world. He’s got his hands under her sweater in a skate up her back, drawing it up to her ribs, and the soft fuzz of his jacket on her bare skin makes her suck in a breath.

“I want you in those shoes, Sansa,” he says in the middle of a trail of kisses from her mouth to her throat, and he turns them as one until she’s got the table’s edge against her thighs again, and when she slides her arms over his shoulders it’s nothing for him to lift her by the hips and set her down on the tabletop. “Now,” he gruffs against her ear, hands leaving her to brace themselves on either side of her.

“We can’t,” she says, body ignoring her words as her legs lift as if of their own accord, as he leans over her until her body arches, breasts pressed to his chest, back curved like a bow as he kisses her.

“Yes we can. Bronn’s at the nursery. Genna’s in school all day. And you’re here in those shoes and you are completely irresistible,” he says, voice deepening, words lengthening with the languid luxury only an empty house can offer. He walks his hands towards the center of the table, pushing her slowly, slowly back until she’s stretched out on the table and he is a press of muscle and body heat above her, and she links her ankles at the base of his spine, keeping him captured and close, all hers to devour.

“But Margie’s coming to pick me up,” she breathes, eyes sliding shut as her head turns to the left under the weight of his kisses along her jaw, and the sunlight streaming in warms her face, and it’s an odd tingling contrast, the splash of daylight on her face and the ache he puts into place with his attentions. They so rarely have moments of intimacy during the day, what with work and Genna’s uncanny ability to pop in from  _anywhere_ when she’s home _,_ and there is a thrill layered on top of her arousal at the idea that they have this house to themselves, even now at 9 o’clock on a Friday morning.

“Screw Margie,” he says, driving a hand under her sweater, his hand a cup over the lace of her bra, and she squeezes her legs around him to lift her hips, digs her nails into his shoulders, and despite the thickness of his coat he hums, a low, dark, dangerous sound that prompts a laugh to come shivering out of her mouth.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” a woman says from the doorway, and Sansa is a gasp and Sandor is a  _Jesus Christ_  when they turn as one to see Margie standing there, leaning against the door frame; they were so preoccupied with each other they neither of them seemed to hear the door open. The winter air rushes in like wild horses, chills her skin and cools her hot blood. Margie shakes her head with a grin. “You two are like a couple of teenagers.”

Sandor sighs, drawing up and away from her somewhat, as if it could lessen the scandalous position they are putting on display, and he kisses her before resting his forehead against hers.

“We really don’t have good luck on this table, do we,” he says, and she laughs as he stands, offering her the steady grip of his hand as he pulls her to a sitting position, as she unhooks her ankles from around him and gets to her sparkling feet.

“No, we really don’t, do we?”

 

“It takes that long to pick up a spare set of work gloves, huh?”  Bronn says when he slams back into the nursery, surfing on a humid wave of winter wind, and Sandor buys time with a roll of his eyes as he tosses the gloves on the counter by the register. It’s warm in here, deliciously so, and he chafes his hands to get the blood pumping to match the heat here, though he had no problem doing  _that_  back at the house.

Bronn is in a squat by a torn open white trash bag, unpacking a bare root fruit tree from the wet straw and hay it came shipped in, is quick to position the five foot tall thing over a 15 gallon pot, and Sandor takes no time to grab the bag of soil by his side, lowering to his knees and pouring out the warm, moist earth over the trimmed down roots.

“There was uh, Lady got out,” he lies, sifting and patting the soil around the tree, and Bronn glances at him, raises his eyebrows and nods like this is fascinating and brand new information, and Sandor knows he’s busted even before the grin breaks out on his friend’s face. “Margie told you, didn’t she?” he says with a sigh, and he thinks he’s gonna kill her. She and Sansa are thick as thieves now, busting into each other’s houses with bridal magazines and ideas for baby names for whenever Margie gets pregnant, they text each other late into the night and early in the morning, and whenever he needs the truck Margie’s there to lend Sansa her Jeep. It’s no surprise, then, that she waltzed right into their house, and he supposes it’s no surprise either than she immediately found a way to tell Bronn.

“Not so much told me as she showed me,” Bronn says once the tree is replanted, and he wipes his wet and dirty hands on his pants as he stands, laughing when Sandor fixes him with an incredulous look.

“She took a damn  _photo?_ Jesus, you’re both a couple of horn dogs,” he says with a shake of his head, trying to think back to whether or not he even heard the click of her camera phone, but then again he was so wrapped up in auburn and warm skin, her hands and those shoes. 

 “You’re calling  _us_  the horny ones? When you’re at each other like newlyweds and you haven’t even met at the altar yet?” and he twists his body away from Sandor just in time to protect his face from the handful of dirt Sandor throws at him.

“You and Margie have been at it like rabbits forever, dirt bag, calling the kettle black,” he says as he gets to his feet, slapping the dirt from his knees before moving for the next unwrapped tree.

“Hey, don’t get mad at me, man, all I did was look at a text message,” Bronn says, hands in the air as Sandor threatens to chuck another grip of soil at him. Instead he lets it sift back to the freshly potted Asian pear. They are silent a few moments as Sandor squats down to tear into another garbage bag of wet straw and trimmed roots, as Bronn uses the toe of his boot to scrape off a swipe of mud on the baseboard of the old kitchen cabinet they keep their cash register on. Unable to resist the temptation, Sandor finally looks up and over his shoulder at his friend, who is staring intently down at the gravel beneath their feet.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, just show me,” Sandor says as he stands once more, and Sandor laughs when Bronn grins and digs in his pocket for his smartphone.

“Jesus, I thought you’d never ask,” he says, and Sandor steps to his side and peers at the screen as Bronn pulls up his photo gallery and hands him the phone, peering over to look, and Sandor twists his body away, telling him to fuck off.

“Take your own dirty picture,” he says, holding the phone in such a way that Bronn can’t see. “Christ knows your wife has the photo equipment for it.”

It’s nothing artfully posed or pornographic, not that he’s watched those kinds of movies in about a hundred years, but the sight of Sansa’s hair in a sprawl on the table, her face turned away from the camera, his own buried in the crook of her neck and his hand up her sweater makes him shudder. He can almost feel once more the press of her knees in his sides, the heat of her skin through the lace of her bra, one of many he’s starting to memorize by touch and sight, in the drag of his grasp and the nip of his teeth.  _Black lace and mint green lace, tangerine satin, the palest pink satin he’s ever—_

“Too bad she was in jeans instead of a dress, huh? Probably would have finished before Margie even pulled up the driveway,” and Bronn winces with a laugh when Sandor punches his shoulder, as much as punishment as a way to draw himself out of his mind’s wandering, but then he grins.

“Sundress season is the best season,” he says, and he laughs when Bronn says  _Tell me something I don’t know._ They work in amused, companionable silence a while, unpacking and replanting pear and pecan trees, the image of him and Sansa a warm sear on his thoughts.

“You’d think I would have knocked Margie up by now considering how often she’s in those things, even in the fall,” Bronn says after a moment, and Sandor pauses, looking up at him as he holds the sapling steady while the other man pours soil in around it.

“Look, man,” Sandor says, stalling a moment because he feels bad for his friends, knows each month Margie is a disappointed mope around the house when it doesn’t happen, stalling too because he has absolutely no experience with this kind of shit. Sansa has been on the pill since before they even came together, and he is all happy ignorance of this world. “This uh, doesn’t this kind of thing take time?”

“Yeah, but we’re not long on that these days, unless I want to be changing diapers in my forties,” he says with a shake of his head. Sandor’s eyes widen and he blanches at the thought, being a 40 something with baby puke on his shirts and a box of diapers in his truck. “I could kick myself sometimes, waiting as long as I did.”

“You had a mortgage you wanted to pay off. Your folks had a shit marriage that led to your mom bailing on the two of you. It makes sense. Don’t beat yourself up, not for that. I have a laundry list of stuff you could kick your own ass over, but taking time to deal with your crap and process your demons or whatever, nah,” Sandor shrugs, dropping his chin to focus on their work, voice gruff though he tries to speak lightly enough, to wade quickly through it. To his relief his friend thinks on it a moment before nodding, and they finish out the day replanting.

“Never used to have any trouble, giving me shit about not getting off the dime and marrying her before I did,” Bronn says later as they’re locking up the nursery.

Sandor gives him a frank look in the light of a dying day, all wash of grey and muted hue, knows it’s the light that makes him look so tired, that dulls the bright look in his eyes he’s had since he was in high school. But it reminds him of Jonn Blackwater and the ashen way he sort of faded into his grave, and he wonders at his friend’s ability to deal with pressure. Aside from his father’s death and a few bills each month, Bronn hasn’t had much stress in his life, a life of horses and roses, plinking and drinking, putting his hands in the dirt and his hands on his woman, and that reminds him of the woman he calls  _his_  own, the stop and the start of them, how it nearly fell apart. He shrugs.

“Everybody lives life differently, I guess,” and Bronn grins, but then he thinks of those sparkly shoes of hers locked at the base of his spine, a glint in the sunlight, and when Sandor tells him to text him that photo Bronn throws his head back and laughs.

 

She is a hum and whir, thinks this must be what a beehive feels like, full of sticky sweet and fit to burst with buzzing warmth, all because of the wedding dress she can call her own now. It flits like an angel on the periphery of her thoughts, a billow and waft of soft skirts and gauzy swathes of fabric, the kiss of silk, the cinching on her waist. She is a tiptoe instead of steady stride around the house that afternoon when she comes home, her fingertips a drift on surfaces, the countertop, the back of a chair, the edge of the table.

The dress consumes her thoughts, even after Sandor and Genna come home, and Sansa is sitting there on the sofa with a dreamy, distant smile when Gen bangs through the door with an exultant  _SANNY_ , flinging her backpack to the ground and streaking across the room to come leaping into her lap. Sansa  _oofs_  under the weight and recent growth spurt of the fawn-legged five year old, but if she expected a hug she is wrong, because Genna is all wriggle and zero stillness.

“Did you find a dress?” she asks as she squirms in Sansa’s arms and sits up, looking at her with wide grey eyes, so reminiscent of Sandor’s, and it’s to him that she looks when she replies. He is by the door, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it before he makes his slow approach.

“I did,” Sansa says, watching for his reaction; it’s a subtle one but she reads him like a book, knows by the briefest pause, the lift of eyebrows, the subsequent narrowing of his eyes and smile are signs of a curiosity he will not voice without further provocation. She is in a mood sent from heaven and so she is more than happy to tease and to toy. “It’s very pretty and it’s very top secret,” she says to Genna, widening her eyes and nodding when the little girl  _Oohs_  at the idea of not just a pretty dress but a secret one.

“Is it like Elsa’s?” she asks, and Sansa laughs, shaking her head; it’s a gauzy shade between blush and peach, is nothing like the Disney princess’s gown.

“No, but my  _shoes_ are kind of like Elsa’s dress. Would you like to see those?” and Sandor groans as she and Genna stand up from the sofa. She grins at him, thinks of  _I want you in those shoes, Sansa. Now,_  and he is simply too easy to tease.

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” he says with mild sarcasm when she slips past him without greeting or kiss to get her shoes from their room, but she turns on the ball of her foot, walks back to him and the spread of a smile he’s got waiting for her.

“Hello dear,” she says, still up on her tiptoes when she kisses him chastely, “now if you don’t mind, I have a very pretty pair of high heels to go put on and prance around in,” she says against his mouth, words a sift against his beard, and he rests a hand on her hip, slides the other to the small of her back, pinning her place.

“What if I do mind?” he says, head tipped down to hers, and she lingers up on her tiptoes, more than happy with the burn of her calves to be so close to him, to have the feel of his arms around her when he pulls her in for a legitimate embrace.

“Then I guess you’ll have to keep minding,” she says with another kiss, dropping back down to her bare heels, but Sandor follows her, bowing his head, curving his back to keep the kiss alive.

“Stop it daddy, I want to see Sanny’s shoes!” Genna huffs from the hall, all demands, all teenager, and Sansa laughs when he mutters  _So do I_  under his breath.

She models them for Genna, lets her touch the beading and sequins, the crystals and shimmer, and upon her insistence wears them the rest of the evening as Sandor grills rosemary Dijon chicken outside in the blustery cold, and he finally gets a good, close look when she props her feet in his lap after dinner, legs crossed at the ankle, and he too ghosts his finger down the heel, across the peep toe and the cherry red of her toenail polish. It is the faintest of touches but it makes her shiver all the same, and he grins when she jumps slightly at the contact of skin.

 “No shoes, huh,” he says when she slips under the covers that night, all lights shut off save for their two nightstand lamps, two soft globes of light that meet in the center of the bed where Sandor is now. Sansa laughs, as hushed as the lighting here in the soft world of goose down comforter and cotton sheets.

“I’m not wearing them to bed, they’ll get ruined,” she says, sliding to the middle to warm up against him, a happy sigh escaping her when he turns on his right side to accommodate her, and she’s got the warmth of his chest against her back, the slide of his arm around her ribcage beneath her breasts. They fall asleep nearly every night like this, and it’s as familiar as sliding a familiar glove on her hand, as exciting to this day as it was putting on her wedding shoes for the first time.

“I didn’t say to bed,” he says, his voice a roll of thunder deep within his chest, and she laughs again, eyes sliding shut as he lifts his hand to sweep her hair off her neck so that he might kiss her, runs his fingers down her arm before dropping to her stomach and the hem of her shirt.

“You think you’re so smooth, huh. I know  _exactly_  what you mean. You’ll get me in those shoes, but only after you marry me. Those shoes are off limits until our wedding night,” she says, sucking in a breath when he slides his hand under her shirt, pressing his palm to the space between her breasts, his thumb a dangerous brush against her left nipple. She runs her hand up his forearm, lacing her fingers between his, two hands pressed to her heart, and she tips her head back, turns to find him, to kiss him. He’s ready and waiting, hot mouth, slide of a tongue, and he moves their hands to cover her left breast, and she feels his knuckles roll under her palm as he kneads, squeezes, makes her moan.

“Wedding night,” he repeats, his hand roaming, taking hers with it, and they dip as one between her legs, coaxing from her a rocking of her hips that makes him grunt. He tugs on her clothes, move his hips forward, and it’s nothing at all, really, to shimmy out of pajama pants and kick them to the foot of the bed to tangle up in the sheets, to drag her shirt off and throw it to the floor. Sandor pushes into her from behind with a slow groan and she reaches back for him, nails to flesh as she urges him forward. They are slow, long, shuddering thrusts as he holds her against his chest, and he takes his time filling her up, pausing to keep himself buried inside her until she squirms and whimpers, draws her hips from him so that he is forced to follow.

“Please don’t stop, don’t stop,” she whispers when he slows to a stop inside her once more, because it’s agony, this pace, the way he lingers, dangles her above the dark drop of orgasm only to pull her away from it. “Please, Sandor, please,” and he reaches for the hand she grips his hip with, sliding his fingers between hers, an echo of her earlier move with him. He answers her pleas by moving their hands over her hip down between her legs, just above where they are joined, where he is that devastating slow slide inside her. He has never done this before, and it sends a jolt thudding beneath her fingers when he moves his hand on top of hers, pushes her forefinger into the sudden explosion of tingling hypersensitivity. Sandor moves his hand up to grab her breast, leaving her to her own devices, and he lifts his head to speak into her ear.

“I want to feel you,” he says, withdrawing until she is nearly robbed of him completely only to fill her once more with a firm thrust. “Let me feel you come, Sansa,” and when her fingers start moving he groans, growls out a  _Yes_  between the hitching gasps she cannot tamp down. He keeps to his murderous pace, slathering pleasure on top of what she’s doing to herself until it all spills over, and again she’s got champagne on the brain, the fizzing of saltwater against the rocks of some wild shore when she comes, back arching, hips moving in time to her orgasm. He comes not long after, her name a grit and drag, sea foam through sand as he kisses and bites her shoulder, as he pushes into her, once, twice, wringing out the last of their orgasms before it’s stillness and silence save for the panting of their breaths.

“I would marry you now,” he says later that night in the dark, his breath a warm stir in the hair at the back of her neck, spooned up as they are once more, though fully clothed this go round. His words make her smile. It is an altogether different heat that swells up inside her to hear him say that, and she tugs on the arm he has draped over her, pulls his hand to her mouth to kiss his callouses, to press his palm to her heart in hopes he can feel how hard he makes it pound.

 “Soon, baby,” she whispers to her pillow, and his bicep tightens as he pulls her that much closer.

“Not soon enough, little bird. It could never be soon enough.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, specifically Sandor's second POV, is dedicated to (and brought to you by) Bookhoor. <3
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset!](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/109611517423/kiss-him-back-chapter-2-feels)

March 2015

 

Once their bedroom was a lonely place he used to call his, and it was a world comprised of clean lines and minimalism, of blank walls and stillness. Now it is a world of color and sensation. Perfume bottles and necklaces adorn the massive dresser they share, a blanket that’s softer than he’d care to admit drapes the lower half of the bed and matches the throw pillows that are the colors of peacock feathers. There is always a small stack of books on her nightstand, some that he eventually sneaks to his side if they’re interesting enough, and there is an orchid potted in a nest of moss on his desk that she gave him for Valentine’s Day last month, a holiday he very nearly fucked up if it wasn't for a barrage of texts from Margie. And then there are the photographs. There are pictures of them on every wall, some posed and some candid, all of them in rich color, all of them everyday reminders of the life he has somehow stumbled into.

It’s his favorite room in the house.

He’s there now at his desk, receipts and ledgers spread from corner to corner as he works on his taxes, the laptop screen lit up with an Excel spreadsheet. He is able to focus solely on his own now that he and Bronn finally hired out an accountant for the nursery and landscaping company. But it’s still a pain in the ass, and he’s wasted half of his Thursday off, half of the peace and quiet while Genna is in school, shuffling papers and getting himself organized, as if he has not done this every year for nearly 20 years.

After a stretch of the shoulders and an arching of the spine he gets himself another glass of water, and he drinks it in the kitchen, looking through the window over the sink down at the greenhouse. It’s difficult to keep his mind on numbers and not on plants, a struggle not to just say _Fuck this_ and go mess around in the dirt for the rest of the afternoon. Sandor is not a desk jockey and never will be, but after some minutes he wills himself to set the glass down and return to the bedroom. From the hall he glances into the room that was Sansa’s about a hundred years ago and is now her office, her little world of controlled chaos where she grades papers and tries not to pull her hair out. He knows she’s having fun up in Washington but it’s been a lonely few days without her, and he misses the sight of her bent over her papers or her lesson plans, the sound of her stretch and sigh, Genna’s begging and pleading to please come play. His daughter sometimes gets her way if she asks sweetly enough, _And so do I._

Sandor mutters as he settles back to his paperwork, ferrets out which trips to Home Depot and Mesquite Valley Nursery were personal or business related, sets in piles receipts for gas mileage, pulls out one of three 2014 ledgers to double check his math. It’s then that he sees it, in his own hand, letters all capitalized as he’s done since high school when his poor penmanship made him take the drastic measure so his teachers could read his homework. It first shows up in the month of March and lasts only a few months, but there it is:

_GENNA NANNY_

Sandor sits back with a exhaled _Huh,_ gazing down at the heading of the column and the figures jotted there, because while it’s felt like a hundred years, he’s only known her a year, or will in a matter of days. One year since she came tip-tripping into his life with the sway of her hair and _I’m Sansa Scars,_ and he laughs, here in a room that once was only his, that is now as much hers as his own heart is. One year ago he penciled those words in, never knowing the impact they’d have on his life, and he is reminded of a phone call he took from Tulsa, Oklahoma not so many months before writing them down.

“Sansa Scars,” he mutters under his breath with a shake of his head and a rub of his hand across his mouth, the cause of that Freudian slip barely registering anymore beneath the sweep of his touch. One year since he met her, and then he realizes what that means, and he grins, sliding his phone off the desk like a deck of cards, dialing her number from memory.

“Hey, big bad, I didn’t expect to hear from you ‘til tonight,” Sansa says when she picks up after the second ring, and he hears the smile in the sweet of her voice and the lift of her words. He snorts at the nickname, can hear the gaggle of female voices like a flock of birds in the background, the underlying din of a public place.

“Hey, yourself. You all having a good time up there?” She’s been gone two days and won’t be home until Saturday, but he can hear the laughter and the clinking of glasses, thinks that a bridal shower usually lasts one day but Sansa’s seems to be going on for several. His little bird deserves it, and if he gave two shits about bridal stuff he’d throw the party for her. As it is, she’s right where she should be.

“Oh my God, yes. I mean, I miss you guys like crazy, but I think Margie and Ygritte are going to either paint this town red or burn it down,” and there is a squawk of laughing indignation in the background. “We’re just having lunch right now and then Margie wants to see Shireen’s studio and take pictures of her working, and now Arya is trying to think of a tattoo idea that’s bigger than my tree,” and Sandor chuckles when Sansa clearly pulls the phone from her mouth to tell her sister _You wish._ He wishes he had that tree to trace right now.

“Listen, baby, I’m not going to keep you from your friends, but I wanted to tell you something,” he says, folding an arm behind his head as he leans back in his chair and stares up at the ceiling.

“Oh yeah?” and there’s a grin to her voice, coy and curling, lower and huskier, and it sounds like she’s got her hand cupped over the receiver when she says with naughty inflection, “Do I need to excuse myself first?”

Sandor laughs. “Having champagne with lunch?” and she hums noncommittally with a poor attempt at innocence, and it’s clear they’re all listening to the devils on their shoulders today, much to his amusement. _Paint the town red, indeed_. “No, you’re fine where you are. I just uh, it came to my attention just now that we’ve known each other a year already. Or we will, next week,” he says, swiveling in his chair to bring himself closer to the desk, peering down at the ledger, the date right beside those two fateful words. “That’s uh, what do you call it, an anniversary, isn’t it?”

“Sandor,” she says, drawing out the second syllable of his name, the _R_ of his name a purr in her throat. “That’s so sweet of you. How did- wait a minute, did Margie put the screws to you again?” He glances at the cymbidium orchid on his desk, orange and yellow, the color of a summer sunset; he thinks on how he reciprocated in the nick of time with a lavender rose bush planted out front, thanks to some expletive-laced texts from the one and only Ms. Tyrell.

“No, she didn’t,” he gruffs, “and you can ask Little Miss Nosy herself if you want, unless she’s busy getting Bronn’s name tattooed on her ass. I was doing taxes,” he starts, and Sansa laughs outright, clear as those wind chimes she’s fallen in love with, cutting him off midsentence. He rolls his eyes but can summon no exasperation, not when she’s been gone, not when he’s got the wisp of her voice in his ear.

“Taxes? Oh Sandor, how _romantic,_ ” she teases, all giggle and flush. He can practically see her press a hand to her heart, the flash of a pearl on her left ring finger.

“Shut it,” he says, unable to beat back a grin. He tells her how she came here in March – _Believe me, I remember,_ she says – and how the realization and memory snapped him from his concentration to be reminded of it, of _her,_ and suddenly the background noise fades and she must have gone ahead and excused herself so she can hear him better. “You’ve given me the best year of my life, Sansa,” he says bluntly.

“Same here,” she murmurs, softness her voice and silence her background, and it makes him smile, close his eyes.

“So let’s celebrate when you come home, hmm?” He’s not quite sure _how_ yet, but he’s sure they’ll think of something.

“What, like dinner out?” she asks, and it’s like she can hear his thoughts. They’ve gone out just the two of them, but not often; between Bronn and Margie’s wedding and visiting her family for Christmas there haven’t been too many leisurely months since they came together for good. He can count how many times they’ve gone to dinner in Tucson on one hand and still have fingers to spare.

“No, we’ll do something better,” he vows, having no idea what that means. He sets the issue aside to finish his paperwork before Loras brings Genna home, he eats dinner with his daughter and puts her to bed with full presence of mind, but that night he lies awake in an otherwise empty bed, his right arm outstretched beneath her cool pillow, and wonders what the hell he’s got to pull out of his sleeve.

 

It is a vacation of _laughter_ far beyond it being a holiday of wedding talk and opening of gifts, few as they were upon her adamant insistence _._ To be surrounded by family, by women she can truthfully call friends is too sweet and priceless a boon, and she’ll not waste it fawning over china patterns Sandor will hate and she’ll never have the courage to hand wash. She hasn’t palled around with a crowd of friends in over two years, hasn’t danced in a throng of girlfriends in even longer, hasn’t had the joy of hearing her own laughter drowning in the peals of so many other women’s in what feels like forever. Sansa is making up for lost time and loving every minute of it, despite sleeping in a bed without _him,_ without Irish Spring and strong arms and the tangle of Genna’s hair under her chin in the mornings.

She and Margie came in Tuesday afternoon; two women of dry earth and endless sky stepping into the world of cloud choked horizons and spongy lawns. They were immediately surrounded by Sansa’s family, and Margie’s eyes went wide at the crowd of Starks. _And I thought I had a big family,_ she said with a grin when Robb, a Seattleite now that Talisa put her foot down after another accident at sea that nearly cost him his neck, took her suitcase for her. Arya was a thousand and one questions, Rickon a grin and shrug when Sansa realized he was in short sleeves, Bran a hug to the both of them when they got back to the car where he waited in the backseat.

Wednesday morning, the day of her shower, saw the disappearance of men, to work or to school or back to Seattle where Robb and Talisa now live with Jon and Ygritte, only to be replaced by the women. They came dressed to the nines in yoga pants and slippers, tank tops and pony tails, everything Sansa wanted for a pajama party style shower that would wind up lasting well into the evening. It was champagne and strawberries, croissants and jam, lemon merengue and quiche, until it was bloody marys and bagels and lox, a salacious game of Cards Against Humanity before her mother started dragging out the gifts in a silent plea to stop Arya from shrieking _Flying sex snakes_ every five minutes.

That afternoon they wheezed from prolonged giggles in a limp-limbed heap on the living room floor, everyone thick as thieves, surrounded by wrappings and bows and Crate and Barrel boxes, mired in a crinkle-rustle sea of Target-logo tissue paper after Shireen told a hilarious story about Rickon and a man in drag. In no time Arya made it worse with a series of sex jokes so bawdy even Ygritte turned red and hid behind her bloody mary. Luckily, Cat was in the kitchen putting more mini quiches in the oven.

Last night the entire group of them were half drunk and slumped against the bathroom counter of some downtown Seattle bar when Margie stumbled into Meera and made her smear her lipstick halfway down her chin. Meera left it there in defiant, self-deprecating humor, ordering drinks with straight face and perfect poise while Sansa had to trot off on her stilettos with a hand over her mouth. Even when uncle Benjen picked them up, Jon being on call, Meera sat in front as regal as she pleased, cracking jokes until Ben choked on laughter so hard he had to linger at a green light as Meera pounded his back. They idled and they joked, pinching each other and texting photos to one another and playing songs on their phones. Sansa laughed, vision a slight shimmer as music bumped the SUV, as voices rose and fell all around her, as giddy love and spangled excitement filled her up like sunlight in a greenhouse.

Laughter, laughter, _laughter._

She went to sleep full of giggles and buzz, a sway of smiles in her old bed, so much smaller than the one she and Sandor share. Theirs is an ocean of sheets they swim in, cling and a pull, dip and a dive against each other, kiss and swallow, lick and nip. Hers, a scrapbook of memory and loneliness and bitter feelings there in the end; a little boat, a party of one, and the only thing that kept her from missing him to the point of pain was that she was there _because_ of him, back in her old bed because of the ring on her finger and the unspoken vows coiled up in her belly, and suddenly the little boat was not so sad, anymore.

Now it is Friday evening and there is finally time for Arya's tattoo, and Sansa is doubled over in another fit of laughter here in Seaworthy Tattoo after Shireen slaps Rickon on at the ass and says “Back to the kitchen, bitch!” when he leaves his drawing station in the back to see what the commotion is all about. Shireen spins on her heel and grins at them with a shrug, a skyward roll of her eyes as she walks toward the gaggle of woman that come spilling into her studio. Margie, well acquainted with the photographs of Sansa’s family, points to Rickon’s back as he retreats, hunch of shoulders and shake of head and short, spiked mohawk.

“What is he even _doing_ here, isn’t your little brother like 17?” Margie asks, looking down as she adjusts the lens on her camera, after they regain what little composure they had walking in. The tattoo studio is just as Sansa remembers it when she came in for her tree; the same gleaming white walls and glossy polished wood floors, the art everywhere and the bee buzz hum of tattoo machines coming from the back room.

“16 actually. He’s apprenticing, I guess, though for now Shireen and Davos have him just drawing, cleaning tubes, mopping floors, that kind of stuff,” Sansa smiles, nodding at Margie’s look of surprise. “I know, I know. I guess mom signed off on his apprenticeship after he swore to get his grades up, and apparently it’s working. He won’t touch a machine for a long time, but I guess he needs that time to work on art. “

“The first time you mentioned him to me it was about graffiti,” Margie says, peering through her lens, focusing on where Davos is seated at the front desk, his arms so tattooed they look nearly back from this distance. She snaps a photo, gazes at it in the preview screen and smiles. She looks up at Sansa. “Clearly, art is his calling.”

“Holy shit, it’s perfect,” Arya says 20 minutes later, and Sansa glances up in time to see her sister peering over a piece of paper held in Shireen’s hands. “Although it’s nowhere _near_ as intense as my sister’s,” she says, and here Talisa and Ygritte turn as one to give an appraising look at Sansa, who glances up from a texting session with Sandor in time to catch it as she sits on the sofa. She blinks, finally registering her sister’s words.

“Wait, what?” It’s a strange collision of worlds once more here in Shireen’s studio, Sandor on her phone and in her heart and nowhere else to be seen. But then she grins, because there _is_ one more place to find him, even in Spokane, because she wears him on her skin now and not just in the soft, woolly confines of her heart. She stands with a shrug, proud and modest and brazen and humble, turns towards the window to offer her right side to the room, and she lifts the hem of her shirt to the underwire of her bra. Sansa doesn’t have to look but she knows it’s a snake and coil of roots and boughs, digging down and lifting up, reaching out and snaking deep to the soul.

“Holy shit, so that’s the Sandor tattoo, huh?” Ygritte says, stepping close enough to stoop and peer at the design on her ribs. Sansa raises her eyebrows as she looks at Arya, who simply shrugs and grins as if to say _The grapevine_ , _I guess_ before Shireen leads her back to her station where Rickon exclaims _Jesus, another sister, huh._

“Yeah, it is,” she says, unable to keep the silk smooth confidence of _smug_ out of her voice. Ygritte hums with interest and curiosity as she straightens and nods, sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“Pretty cool. But I don’t get how it’s all about your fiancé,” she says, and since there is time to kill Sansa sits back down, and Talisa drifts over and sits down as well to hear it while Margie takes photographs. Sansa describes Sandor’s tree and the way his fingers work through soil and sift through the needle-sharp spikes of yucca and sotol, of how he takes broken things and can make them grow. It doesn’t take much for her to run with the topic, not after his sweet reminder that they have an anniversary now, and she spins the pearl ring around her finger as she speaks.

“And you know, he’s incredibly strong and at the same time, incredibly gentle. Tough like freakin’ concrete, but, you know. He um, okay, so I sometimes think of him as a young tree, a bendy, tender sapling, right?” Sansa feels sort of stupid saying it, but it’s something she’s been thinking on, thinking about for months, every time she’s lucky enough to watch him work. Every time she runs her fingers or palm down the tattoo on his side or every time he does the same to hers. And her friends are all eager smiles and bobble-headed nods, just to have her keep going; she has never spoken so much about him, because so far it’s been _hers,_ their relationship; a treasure where X marks the spot after some lifelong hunt for love.

“So yeah, he’s this flexible thing on the inside, but you guys, he’s had such a _hard_ life, and it sort of layered up like rings on a tree all around him until it got tougher and tougher to be, ugh, I don’t know, I guess to just _be._ ” She’s seen and felt and touched and loved the soft of him, the little-boy-lost of him, has subsequently come to appreciate all the more the no nonsense, tough shit man of him. _God, I love him_ , she thinks, cupping her chin in one hand as she lets her imagination trail off down the calendar to August 1st, and she parks herself there with her mind’s eye. _I’ll just wait here for him._

“Okay, so you got the tree because _he’s_ the tree?” Talisa asks between texts with someone whom Sansa can only assume is Robb, bored as he is between jobs. Sansa explains that Sandor had the tree first, that she got her own tattoo done to stand alone but also stand with him, a grove of two twisty, aching souls reaching out to find each other, and when Ygritte mentions tattoos being either foolish mistakes or the ultimate of grand gestures, Margie speaks up.

 “He did the same thing, you know,” she murmurs from behind her camera, back turned to the four women on the sofa as she takes another photo of Davos. Sansa blinks and looks up, groans _Oh no, here we go_ under her breath, much to everyone else’s amusement.

“Well now you _have_ to tell us,” Meera says, and Margie turns towards them with a smile.

 “Two times Sandor’s gotten tattoos that stand for love, for mended hearts. The first time he got _Genna_ tattooed on his chest after adopting her, and the second time,” Margie starts, but Ygritte sucks in a gasp, turning a wide eyed expression from Margie to Sansa.

“You mean he tattooed your _name_ on him? Oh my god, please tell me it’s on his chest too. Fuck, tell me it’s over his heart, and I’ll swoon,” she says, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead, slumping against Talisa and making them all laugh.

“No, not quite,” Margie says with a grin, and Sansa can’t keep the grin off her own face even though she’s shaking her head vehemently, “he has his big tree, as you all know now, but there’s a little bird perched in it now, and I think we all know what _that_ means,” she says before heading in the back to document Arya’s tattooing, and Sansa blushes so violently she can feel it, like the buzz after a glass of red wine.

“I’m going to kill you,” she says later that night, after being called little bird for the past two hours amidst giggles and _Oh Sandor_ and _My sweet little chirp chirp._

“Oh stop,” Margie grins as they flip through the cable channels of her parents’ cable TV, alone in the house now save for Rickon and her parents who are all asleep upstairs. It’s their last night here and they’ve decided to drink Baileys and milk and watch reruns until they fall asleep here in the den. “Everyone loves a nickname.”

“I’m not exactly gonna live this one down, thanks to you,” Sansa sniffs with exaggerated annoyance as they settle in to watch old episodes of _Friends_. “Now everyone’s going to be calling me ‘little bird’ and that’s Sandor’s thing. It’s um, you know, it’s _our_ thing.” The very mention of his name on her own tongue is enough to make her toes curl. _Tomorrow night I’ll be in our bed again,_ she thinks, sipping her drink as the laugh track fuzzes in the background of conversation.

“You and everyone else in town calls me by the nickname Bronn gave me when I was 15,” Margie says with a smile when Sansa stares at her in surprise. “Yep. It was all queen bee, Miss Margaery to anyone else, but then he came along, and, well,” she says, gazing into her mug before sighing richly and looking up at the television. “Here we are.”

“So Bronn made you ‘Margie’ huh?” Sansa asks, and her dear friend laughs, a messy blonde bun and a ratty old Buena High baseball t-shirt with holes along the hemlines of the sleeves.

“As sure as Sandor made you happy for the first time in your life, right, little bird?” and they nod in unison, giggle like girls and tip their heads together before watching television for several episodes, until the Baileys and milk is gone and they’re yawning, tucked up and curled up like two fawns hiding in tall grasses.

“So,” Margie mumbles, a couple of hours later and from beneath the throw blanket they’re both burrowed under, as they watch Phoebe lose her shit over Monica and Chandler making out, “Meera is super cool. I was wondering, is your uncle Benjen seeing anyone?”

 

“Flowers? Champagne? Lube?” Bronn says conversationally, handing an amused Ros her change for the tray of aloe vera; it’s the last sale of the day, judging by the sloping track of the sun as it sinks towards the horizon, pulling with it the inevitable muzzy twilight hour.

“Part of me wants to hang around for this conversation and part of me wants to run for the hills,” she says with a smirk.

“Hills,” Sandor says, and she nods with a roll of her eyes, pulling the small plastic tray of the young succulents off the counter, and Sandor stands to open the door for her before rounding on Bronn. “What the hell is with you?” He grins and shrugs, pushing his baseball hat back before pulling it forward again, the fidget and expression of a much younger man, though Bronn has never had any problems clinging to the vigor of youth. Sandor used to be so _envious_ of him until about a year ago, and suddenly he’s grinning despite himself.

“Hey man, my woman’s been gone as long as Sansa, and I’ve made my plans for the evening. Just wondering how similar they were to yours,” and Sandor can’t help but laugh. They are two middle aged men gossiping about romance like two high school girls. He shakes his head as they close down the nursery. “They’re on their way back as we speak, you can’t tell me you’re not a little excited to see her.”

Oh, he’s excited; it’s the longest they’ve been apart since the first time she went back home for a visit, and now that he thinks of it it’s probably the longest Bronn and Margie have been apart since she was jetting around the country for her photography back in college.

“Of course I am, and Genna’s beside herself. She could hardly stop talking about it when Loras came in this morning,” and he huffs a laugh at the memory of it, his kid a hop and dance around Margie’s brother, still sleepy eyed and holding a cup of coffee as he sat at the kitchen table, Genna putting bows in his hair and lip gloss all over his face so they’d be pretty in time for Sansa’s return. _Poor bastard, but better him than me,_ he thinks, still not over the trauma of waking up from a nap on the sofa yesterday to find his hair knotted to hell from Genna trying to braid his hair the way Sansa braids hers.

“Well whatever you have planned, have a nice night, you big grumpy asshole,” Bronn says cheerfully as he swings open the door to his truck, and Sandor is half seated behind the wheel of his own when he turns and grins at his friend.

“There’s plenty of flowers in the backyard, I’ve got white wine in the fridge and so far we’ve never needed it,” he says before slamming the door, and Bronn is a pause and a frown before he puts two and two together, and Sandor has the sight of him throwing his head back and laughing before pulling off on the 83 and heading back home.

 _They’re on their way back_ rolls around in his head like water bottles in the bed of his truck, and he feels like a damn puppy dog, is almost embarrassed by how eager he is to see her. He wanted to pick her up but Margie drove them to the airport earlier that week, all pronouncement of _Girls Week_ and _No Boys Allowed_ , and they were a squeal of tires and laughter as she peeled down the highway. So he has nothing to do but wait around, to pick things up and set them down listlessly, to drink a beer and pace the floor like a captive animal.

His heart leaps in his chest, as much from shock as from delight when he sees the refrigerator door open as he heads into the kitchen, the open door blocking all of Sansa from his sight save her ass in a pair of jeans, bent over as she is while she roots around for something, and he’s a feral grin and the pounding of a pulse like the rush of the tide coming in to see her. Without hesitation he winds back and slaps her ass so hard she jumps, but when she straightens Sandor is mortified to see that it’s Loras Tyrell with the biggest shit eating grin he has ever seen.

“Well hey, handsome, it’s good to see you too,” Loras says, not missing a beat as he shuts the fridge and peels open a stick of string cheese, leaning his hip against the kitchen island. “But I have to tell you, I _am_ a married man.”

“Goddammit to hell,” Sandor mutters as he closes his eyes and rubs his temple, and the slap is still a sting on his palm and in his memory because he knows he will never, _ever_ live this one down. “Why are you here without Genna? She always comes to the door when I come home,” and come to think of it, the dog’s not here either.

“She and Lady are in her room watching Octonauts on my iPad,” he says with a shrug, tossing the string cheese on a little plastic plate next to a cut up apple and some crackers. “She’s got the headphones in,” he clarifies when Sandor shakes his head in confusion. Loras grins. “So, _you’re_ an eager beaver, hmm?”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Sandor snaps, pushing past him to grab a beer from the fridge, embarrassed beyond the point of words, but he’s not taken two swigs before the door clicks open and the sound of cowboy boots on concrete fills his ears and his heart.

“Sandor?” she says, and he sets his beer down to walk out of the kitchen and the land of humiliation and sly Tyrell smirks, emerges into the main room in time to catch a blur of auburn and Levis as she leaps into him, arms and legs a wrap as they so often are, her hair a swing into his face, catching in his beard. “Hi,” she whispers, her mouth tucked in close to his ear, and that breathless little word is the finest thing he’s ever heard.

“Hey, sunshine,” he gruffs, his voice all scuff to her music, stone to silk, and then he’s got her mouth on his, a hard hungry press from the both of them, finesse lost to the urgency of simply needing to be close to one another. She is the smell of her shampoo and the taste of her chapstick, she is a familiar weight in his arms, so often does she find her way here where she fits better than a puzzle piece.

“Well _now_ I’m a little jealous,” Loras says, laughing when Margie asks why from the doorway. “I’ll tell you on the ride home, sister. Let me give Genna her snack and I will tell you _all_ about it,” and for the time being Sandor doesn’t even give a shit.

The Tyrells leave shortly thereafter though he’s not sure when, because even when Sansa eventually slides out his arms and back down to the earth he’s got her kisses to intoxicate and befuddle him. After Genna falls asleep in Sansa’s arms while they read story after story, his daughter refusing to be satisfied with just one book after so long an absence, they fall into bed, coming together like a flatline, all _Yes, don’t stop_ and _I missed you_ , the room full of it as he fills her up, as she sets fire to his heart and breathes on the flames.

She tells him about her trip and he laughs against the back of her neck, spooned up and languid as they are now they’ve tended to one another. Her fingers are a sifting drift through the hair on his forearm he’s got draped over her waist, and she describes the tattoo of a little Celtic fox Arya got on the top of her left foot, the way Meera wore lipstick on her face for half the night when they went out on the town. She tells him quietly, voice a hush after she twists in his arms, chests together and head tucked under his chin, about showing off her tattoo, how proud she is of it and how much it means to her, that they share this along with so much else, with _everything_ else.

He tells her how much he missed her though he grunted and groaned those words well enough not twenty minutes earlier, how Genna was a grouchy, bratty snarl of huffs and sighs and pouts and backtalk without her, and Sansa laughs against his throat. He tells her how he and Bronn went plinking and drinking and talked about freedom without wives and fiancées, though they both turned in early, bored after 30 minutes of this so called freedom.

He tells her he loves her and she says it back, not so much as a drop of hesitation between them. Sandor smiles.

They are drifting in and out of sleep, her head on his chest and her leg a drape over his thighs when she slides a hand across his chest with a sleepy inhale and a murmur of confusion.

“So wait, what was Loras jealous about again?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part one of two.  
>    
> [Picset!](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/110387114533/kiss-him-back-chapter-3-feels)  
> [Picset 2!](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/110501439438/bex-morealli-kiss-him-back-by-jillypups-chapter)  
> [Picset 3!](http://vanillacoconuts.tumblr.com/post/110404526113/kiss-him-back-chapter-3-jillypups-bex-morealli)
> 
> [The Tom Waits version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtLVXBqfqBY)  
> [The Emiliana Torrini version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKLjrpWKe34)

April 2015

 

It’s a loose breezy Friday and she’s got the windows of her classroom open to let the afternoon air in, and while it’s too dry to carry any scent of earth or creosote, it’s still pleasant and cool, a constant happy sigh from the sky. Sansa feels the sift and lift of fine hairs at the nape of her neck and it makes her smile through the music on her earbuds, despite the tedium of grading tests from her morning classes. She got her legs crossed and the one foot bobs, ballet flat dangling from her upturned toes, as much to the rhythm of the music as to the rhythm of the red pen checkmarks she makes beside each answer. The career of high school teacher is one she’s not even had four months but already she loves it, as exhausting and intimidating as it’s been getting acclimated. She hit the ground running five weeks after getting her Arizona licensure, found herself shaking hands with Principal Myles in his office three days after they came home from Spokane. Margie proved to be as astute a professional matchmaker as a romantic one. One of the freshman English teachers moved suddenly when his wife was transferred to the east coast, and the second Margie caught wind the rest was history, or in Sansa’s case, her future.

She’s grading briskly though she does her best to focus and not rush; she wants to do a good job but she also wants to get through as many as she can before her free period is over. Sandor has put off their anniversary date until tonight, the 24th of the month, which she supposes it more accurate since they sort of hated each other in the beginning.  _Hate is a strong word, though,_  she thinks as she dings a student for an incorrect definition.  _Frustration, irritation, misunderstanding, for sure; and tension,_  she thinks, and then she’s biting down on a grin, holding her head in her hand as she turns the page over to grade the back. At least  _one_  thing hasn’t changed, though nearly everything else has.

“The kid write down something funny?” Sandor’s voice cuts through the silence, a night train through the desert, a rumble that charges into the music she’s listening to. Sansa jumps slightly; he’s never visited her here before and even if he has, she was so lost in thought and the mechanical way of grading she slipped into to  _not_  be taken aback.

“I was just thinking about  _you_ , actually,” she smiles, patting her hair self-consciously as she pulls the earbuds out and sets them on her desk, places the red pen down beside them. Sansa takes a good look at him, and it’s his usual uniform he’s in: jeans and mud brown Timberlands, a t-shirt that started out white that morning and the pair of aviators dangling from its collar.  _If he ever starts wearing suits on a regular basis, I think I’ll cry._  She stands, sweeping her hands down her front, smoothing the invisible wrinkles in the dress she’s wearing over black leggings. Sandor grins from his lean against the doorframe, unfolding his arms as he pushes off the jamb and walks into her classroom.

“Think of the devil and the devil appears,” he says, and Sansa risks discovery by students when she lifts up to her toes to kiss him. Normally a man of insatiable appetite, he restrains himself marvelously, one hand kept entirely to himself while the other is the merest suggestion of a cup against her jaw.

“Some devil,” she says, gazing up at him, letting her fingers run in the length of his long hair that’s come over his shoulder. “I guess I’ll have to think of you more often,” and she smiles to hear him chuckle.

They stand a hair’s breadth apart from one another for a moment or two as he returns the gesture, drawing her long ponytail through his fingers before letting it fall and swing back into pace behind her. She’s the faintest sigh when he sidesteps her, his fingers a drift on her hip, a small tug on her dress as he walks away and further into the classroom. He was more than likely his current height in high school or damn near close to it but it’s hard to imagine a student his size sitting in front of her, all scowl and muscle and knitted eyebrows, black hair and mood to match, as Bronn has so often described the past Sandor. Today, though, he is a gentle giant, as ridiculous as that phrase has always sounded to Sansa. He’s a slow, meandering pace, rubber soles a silent treat on linoleum as he walks down a row of desks, expression relaxed and impassive when he turns to her in the back of the classroom.

“So this is your home base, huh?” and she lifts her chin when the pride she has in herself and her new vocation finds its mate in the look he’s giving her. He’s always said that he knew she could do it when she decided to take the big leap from daycare to teaching, congratulated her wholeheartedly when she landed the job. And he’s said he’s proud of her, but there is something different seeing that look on his face  _here_ in her domain, in a part of her life here that is all hers and all because of  _her_  doing.

“This is it,” she says, and he nods, eyebrows raised in impressed approval, shoving his hands in his pockets as he walks back up the center aisle towards her, head bowing as he stops in front of her, so close she has to lean against the front of her desk, has to tilt her head back to regard him. She is reminded with sudden blinding clarity of the very first night he showed her his greenhouse, when he stepped into her to try and intimidate, and instead only sparked something else. The classroom fills now with the shade of humidity and earth, of low thick light and the palpable thing between them that was a mystery then, is well known now.

_Tension._

“You know, after four miserable years here, I never in a million years thought I’d be coming back because I wanted to,” he murmurs, moving a hand from his pocket to lift her hand from the edge of the desk. He pulls it up and between them, rubs his thumb with erotic familiarity against the pearl of her engagement ring. Sandor lifts his eyes to hers, and  _there’s_  the snap and the spark, the thud of her pulse and the ache of it all. “Much less that I’d be coming here just to say hi to a woman who’s going to marry me. I can hardly believe you’re here, sometimes,” he murmurs, and his words tug a sigh out of her mouth, make her eyes slide closed when she whispers  _I’m here now_ and he says  _Oh, I know you are._

“You’ve got about five minutes to kiss me before my next class starts,” she whispers, and he grins, exhales a laugh through his nose before nodding, and he lets go of her hand to press his palm to the nape of her neck beneath her ponytail, to hold her still while he does aa she bids, her heart pounding at the slipslide of tongues, the brush of his t-shirt and the broad chest beneath it when she rests her hand on him.

“I’ll get out of your hair, now. I just couldn’t help myself, coming to see the hot new schoolteacher,” he says when the bell rings, his beard a scrub against her chin as he breaks the kiss.

“You see me every day, and I’ve been the new schoolteacher for almost four months,” she laughs, shaking her head as he walks backwards towards the door with a shrug, and he gestures with a hand around the room.

“Yeah, but now I have a stage where I can set the scene up here,” he says, tapping his temple with a forefinger, and they’re grinning at each other, Sansa in front of her desk, Sandor with his back to the doorway, when a thin trickle of students filters through the meager space his broad figure allows. He starts slightly when he realizes their presence and gives her a farewell nod before turning and leaving, and from the hall she can hear him say “What’re  _you_  looking at?”Sansa’s eyes close briefly.

“Nothin’, man, nothing,” cracks the voice of a 14 year old boy, and there must be a pure look of infinite terror on his face, because when next he speaks Sandor’s voice is lower, still gruff but almost apologetic, if she knows him at all.

“Goddamn right, ‘ _nothing_ ,’” he grunts, and for the next several minutes she answers questions about her fiancé – _How tall is that guy? Can he bench press me, Ms. Stark? Can he bench press_ you _? Does he ever smile? –_ though she gives stern glares to whoever asks her about the scars. She gives each student in the front row a stack of tests to pass back, and it’s not until she’s seated back at her desk when she realizes Sandor must have left something here because there is a small white card with his frank handwriting sitting on the stack of half-graded papers.

_HEY LITTLE BIRD, FLY AWAY HOME_

_ (NO PIT STOPS ON THE WAY) _

An hour later Buena High is nothing but a memory and a shape in her rearview mirror as she heads home in her second hand Rodeo. The sun is a fat, happy thing on the western curve of a sky so blue it blinds, the wind a cool drag through her hair as it comes sweeping in through four open windows. All she can think, despite the music flooding in and mixing with the wind, is  _hey little bird, fly away home,_  and her only reply is  _I’m coming, baby, I’m coming._

She expects him here when she gets home but there’s no white long bed truck in the driveway, and the excited buzz of anticipation falls like a rock inside her as she kills the engine and hops out of the SUV.  _Did I drive too fast, did I beat him here?_ she thinks as she unlocks the door to an empty house; Lady went with Genna to Bronn and Margie’s, and so it’s silent and still, the smell of Pine Sol and sunshine, when she steps inside. Sansa kicks off her flats and hangs her purse by Sandor’s Pendleton, takes two steps in the house before nearly screaming, her hand flying to her mouth as the sight of Margie’s horse Briar grazing in the backyard nearly gives her a heart attack.

“What on earth,” she breathes, heart still a hammer, quickly sliding her feet back into her shoes and crossing the room to step outside. The opening of the sliding door catches Briar’s attention, and when she lifts her head Sansa can see a white card tucked under the cheekpiece of her bridle. “Hey, girl, come here,” she says, approaching the horse slowly. She’s been on a handful of rides over the past months but horses are still a source of slight unease, and the fact that Briar is saddled and ready to go makes her nervous. Margie’s paint horse is mellow and low key, however, as laid back as Penny though half her age, and the moment Sansa slips the card from the bridle she goes back to grazing, the reins a slack loop over a branch of the sapling mimosa she stands next to.

_FIRST KISS_

Sansa frowns with a confused smile, turns the card over to see if there’s more than just these two words, but there is nothing. She  _huhs,_ glances left and right, shades her eyes with the card as she gazes down the hill towards the greenhouse, but there’s no one else here, no other clue save for  _First Kiss,_ but when she turns to look back in the house through the glass door she laughs.

“That damned table,” she says, giving Briar's long neck a pat before turning back to the house. Sure enough, when she bends over, patting the underside of the table, there’s another white card hidden and taped to it, and now she’s grinning, because he’s got her on a scavenger hunt.

_FIRST ROSE. TAKE BRIAR, SHE’S BORED_

“Dammit, Sandor,” she mutters, blowing a breath out as she looks back at the horse, hoping he means where he gave it to her, knowing he means where he got it. “Have it your way, pal, but if I get bucked off or something you’re going to get it.” Sansa changes into jeans and boots, a long sleeved shirt and light jacket and then she’s standing in the backyard again, hands on her hips as she looks at Briar.

“All right, Briar, let’s do this,” she says, freeing the reins from the tree and drawing them up and over the horse’s neck. She takes a grip on the saddle horn, steels herself for a moment before putting her foot in the stirrup and hoisting herself up.

 

“Here comes the bride,” Bronn says from the window, and Margie looks up from where she and Genna are putting together a puzzle on the coffee table. He’s leaning against the window frame, his finger holding back the curtain a few inches, and through the sliver of exposed window she can just see Sansa on Briar, plodding through the field towards them. 

“Good for her, I was half scared she’d just drive over here and screw up Sandor’s plan,” she says, tugging on one of Genna’s braids before standing up and going to Bronn’s side. “You made sure the card’s there, right? It’s windy today,” she says, and Bronn clucks his tongue at her with a roll of his eyes.

“It’s windy  _every_  day, honey. Or should I say ye of little faith. Yeah, I checked the card. I’d never hear the end of it from either of you if I hadn’t. I _duct_ -taped that shit,” he says, and Margie hisses  _Language._ “Sorry, I meant stuff. I duct-taped that stuff. Thing. The card.”

“Is it Sanny? Is she here yet?” Genna is at the window in a second, yanking open the curtains so quickly that Briar’s head jerks from the sudden motion they’re that close to the house. Close enough that Margie can see Sansa’s eyes widen before narrowing, and through the closed window they can hear her shout  _I know you’re there, I can SEE you guys_.

“Shit,” she says, rolling her eyes when Bronn sing-songs  _Language_ , and she tugs the curtains closed. “Yes it’s Sanny, but we’re playing hide and go seek right now,” and there is a squeal when Bronn suddenly bends down and grabs Genna around the middle, hauling her up and over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“This is a pretty dumb hiding spot, Genner,” he says, and Margie grins when her squeal dissolves into the infectious, soul-lifting peal of little girl giggles as he gallops like a horse out of the living room and down the hall. “I know, let’s hide you in the toilet. No one will look in the toilet.”

“No! Not the potty! Margie, Bronny’s gonna put me in the potty!” and the house is full of shrieks and giggles, the sounds of banging against the tub, and then there is the flush of a toilet and a giddy scream, the wild crack of Bronn’s laughter. She grins, walks to the other window on the other side of the front door and peers out. Sansa is smiling as she reads the note, the one on which Sandor drew a little wine glass and wrote  _DRINK’S ON THE ROSE._  Sansa frowns, looks at the back of the card, turns in a circle as she tries to figure out the clue. Margie rolls her eyes.

“I told him it was too freakin’ vague,” she mutters, and drums the window pane with her fingertip. Sansa looks up, breaks into a wide grin and waves at Margie.

“I don’t get it,” she calls out, and Margie shouts _Hops & Vines,_ points to the ground where Sandor left her clippers, mimes a pair of cutting scissors with her fingers, and then Sansa laughs and nods. “Thanks!” and Margie nods, blows a kiss and watches Sansa snip the rose the card was taped to before turning and jogging back to Briar. She lets the curtain fall back to place, goes and sits at the kitchen table with her phone, smiling as the house fills with the sounds of some indescribable game Bronn and Genna are playing in her office.

**Margie:** The little bird has flown the nest

**Sandor:** Very funny 

**Margie:** Have a glass of wine for me 

**Sandor:** Already on it. Thanks btw 

**Margie:** Happy to help, Sandy

**Sandor:** Asshole

**Margie:** :) :) :) 

“It’s been real, but I gotta head out, she’s on her way,” Sandor says, stuffing his phone back in to his pocket, draining his glass and standing up from his seat in one of the bay windows at Hops & Vines.

“It’s so  _romantic_ ,” Ros says with a sigh from behind the bar, elbows on the counter and chin her hands. “I wish some guy would send me on a scavenger hunt.” Sandor rolls his eyes.

“ _I’ll_  send you on a scavenger hunt,” Jaime says from the other window seat, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle on top of the coffee table. “First clue: get on the interstate and head over to Costco. Second clue: eggs, coffee, milk, apples,” he grins, and Renly snorts a laugh into his wineglass. Ros exaggerates a pout.

“I’m not doing your grocery list, Jaime Lannister,” she says, chucking a cork at him that he catches easily in his left hand.

“But it’s so  _romantic,_  sweetie,” Jaime laughs, and even Brienne chuckles, rolling her eyes and sipping her wine.

“Listen, Ros, remember what I said?” Sandor says as he approaches, rapping his knuckles on the bartop. She sighs dramatically and nods, her hair a bounce of curls as she turns, pulls two bottles of sparkling wine from the wine cooler and sets them on the counter between them.

“Take the rose, give her the card,” she says, holding up a stemless glass with his card taped to the bottom of it. “Aren’t you even going to tell us what’s at the end of the rainbow?”

“A leprechaun, I reckon,” he says, grinning at her exasperated expression. “Make sure she stays for the whole glass to give me time, and then make sure Lannister keeps his paw off her.”

“Nobody’s got time for pointless promises, Clegane,” Jaime says, and he and Renly laugh as Sandor walks out to his truck, one bottle of wine under his arm and the other in his hand. He takes the back way home on the only other road that leads to his street, and as he crests a low hill he can just make out Sansa on Briar, a tiny blip of red hair and brown and white horsehide as they amble through the grass. He grins as he gets out of his truck, his hands full of chilled wine, watches them cross the 82 and head up the incline towards Hops & Vines.

_Hey little bird, fly away home._

Sansa was kind of sad to see the rose go, watching Ros twirl it in her fingers and inhale the rich scent before she dropped it in a bud vase full of water, the greedy parts of her snarling in her heart that lavender roses are  _their_  thing, that the color and the flower belong to her and Sandor alone. But she’s got a shrub of them all to herself in their yard, and it’s to their yard she’s heading, heart in her throat and grin on her face, because the last clue had just one word on it. One delicious, sweet word that tickles her spine and makes her toes curl in her boots, less for its definition and more for what it represents.

_GREENHOUSE_

She’s a slow rider, hasn’t even bothered to kick Briar up into so much as a trot, so by the time she makes it back to the house the sun is surfing the horizon, a ball of butter sizzling in a skillet, and the whole world seems warmer and fuzzier for it. Drowsing, sleepy sunlight glows against the grass, sets it on pink and orange fire as the breezes go from balmy to cool to brisk. Sansa pulls the ponytail holder from her hair, lets the wind whip out the crease from the hair tie as she guides Briar around the side of the hill, approaching the greenhouse from the rear.

Sandor is a tall silhouette, a figure of black shadow in a greying world, and as the sun tucks itself in behind the Santa Ritas he flicks on the light, and she has a warm, merry little house of flora and soil to guide her home. The landscape is still, color fading into twilight greys; the air is silent save for the grind of Briar’s teeth against her bit and the soft creak of leather as they walk on, and she can hear the door to the greenhouse open and slap shut. Sansa knows it’s him coming, and she reins Briar in so she can dismount, is back to earth when he rounds the corner, and she tugs on the reins as she leads the horse to where Sandor is.

“Jesus, where have you been, I’ve been waiting around since this afternoon,” he says with a grin, and she laughs with a roll of her eyes, pulls the five white cards from the back pocket of her jeans, holds them up as he leans in and takes the reins from her. He’s got a coil of rope and a halter in the crook of his bent elbow, the sleeves of his button down rolled up over his forearms.

“Hunting _you_ down,” she says with a smile as he kisses her, and he tastes like the sweet champagne she was sipping not twenty minutes ago, smells like Irish Spring and laundry detergent, and she’d have half a mind to shower herself if she wasn’t so happy right where she stands. “On horseback, no less,” and here he laughs.

“I needed you to go slow so I could make it all pretty for you,” he says as draws the reins over Briar’s head, letting them fall to the ground, strong fingers unbuckling the saddle as Margie’s horse nips the grass at their feet. “You drive like a hellion and are even worse on a four wheeler, so horse it was. You looked good though, riding her. Getting the hang of it, I’d wager,” and she grins as he confesses to watching her ride up to Hops & Vines.

“Okay, fine, but make  _what_  all pretty? Is the house painted all pretty in pink now?” she says as he pulls the saddle off, and she is unabashed gaze at the flex of his arms as she combs her fingers through Briar’s mane. Sandor sets the saddle down and gently pulls the horse’s head up by the cheekpiece of her bridle, and in one or two deft movements he’s got that off of her as well.

“You’ll see,” he says, pausing in his work to gaze at her before he slides the halter over Briar’s head and buckles it in place. He hands her the lead rope and hauls the saddle back up in his arms, the bridle and reins a drape of tack over his shoulder. “Come on, slow poke,” he grins, and she huffs a laugh at him, pulling Briar as she follows him back to the greenhouse.

He takes the rope from her once he sets the saddle as carefully as he can on the wheel of an upturned wheelbarrow, tethers the horse to the back of the greenhouse, patting her on the flank before turning to Sansa.

“What are you waiting for, sunshine?” he says, spreading his arm out, and she peers around the rear corner of the greenhouse in the direction of his outstretched hand. Sansa gasps.

“Sandor, what on earth,” she breathes, stepping fully around to the side of the greenhouse with the door. Here where it’s flattest he has spread out blankets, the two from inside the greenhouse and the Mexican blanket from the back of the sofa, layered on top of one another in haphazard fashion. There are pillows and a Coleman camp lantern, a metal pail filled with ice and two bottles of wine, and several plates of what Sansa calls finger foods. There are spreads of cheese, pieces of bread and clusters of grapes, slices of what looks like prosciutto and a bowl of olives. A picnic under the stars is what it is, and Sansa’s breath is utterly taken away. She turns on her heel to stare at him, and he’s  _hopeful,_  like a little boy though he’s got his arms folded across his chest and his head bowed.

“You approve?”

“ _Approve_? Approve,” she repeats, incredulous and disbelieving. “Yeah, I approve, big bad, very much so,” she says, and he unfolds his arms when she steps into him, sliding her hands up and  over his shoulders to pull him down for a kiss. Their mouths meet here in this sliver of time between day and night, where the blue-grey air is thick and hazy, where outlines and shapes are muzzy and spectral. It’s way better than any boring old restaurant in Tucson and she tells him so, makes him smile against her mouth, his scars a wrinkle above the line of his beard.

“There’s a meteor shower tonight, the Lyrids, and I figured it’d be nice to watch it,” he says, informative and shy and eager all in one gruff package. “But it won’t happen until around four or five in the morning, so I figure we could kill time with, you know,” he says, gesturing.

“A picnic, Sandor; you made us a picnic,” she says with a smile, and he snorts a laugh, shrugs with a roll of his eyes before turning her by the shoulders and walking her to the blankets. They stretch out and he pours sparkling wine into the stemless take home glasses from Hops & Vines while she pairs a piece of prosciutto and slice of bread. Theirs is a little world lit up and shaped by the globe of light the lantern offers, is colored by the shades of blue and green and white of the Mexican blanket beneath them, and the occasional snort from Briar and hoots from owls is their serenade. She asks how he planned this out and he tells her the idea came to him when they saw that shooting star a few weeks ago, how the scavenger hunt came about when he pondered how to get her out of the house so he could set up the picnic. He laughs when she tells him about Margie in the window and how Ros teased her, informing her with sly frankness that Sandor wasn’t there, was most certainly _not_ in the wine room of iniquity.

“Oh, hey,” she says after a long, dreamy silence of lying under the stars, his fingers a trail through her hair as he sifts through it, twirls it around his index finger before letting it fall.

“Hmm?” He tips his head towards her when she twists onto her side to face him, eyes sliding shut when she runs her fingertips across the knobbled plane of his scars.

“I heard a song today that made me um, well, it made me think about the wedding,” she says, and she feels girly and embarrassed somewhat, doesn’t want to seem like those women who sit around doing nothing but plan a wedding. To his credit, though, Sandor simply hums with curiosity, and it’s enough encouragement to make her dig into his pocket, eliciting an altogether _different_ sort of sound from him, and he says _Oh, damn_ when she pulls out his phone, and she laughs.

“All right, you tease, play me this song,” and he looks back up to the sky, folding his arms beneath his head as she props herself up on an elbow, pulls up YouTube and finds the song.

“It’s called I Hope I Don’t Fall in Love With You by this woman, Emiliana Torrini,” she says, lying back down with her head on his chest, and she sets the phone on his stomach after pressing play. It’s a sweet song and lovely, all piano and guitar and voice, and he is still and silent as it plays, and Sansa chews her lip as she listens to it, staring at the little glow of light his phone puts out.

“It’s nice,” he says, shifting her slightly as he unfolds one arm and picks up the phone, typing one handed with his thumb as she lifts her head to look at him.

“But is it, you know, _wedding_ nice?”

“Of course it is, baby. We’ll play whatever you want, I just wanted you to hear the original,” he says, glancing with a smile at her when her jaw drops. “By a guy called Tom Waits,” he says, setting the phone back on the flat of his abs once he plays the song. “One of my favorites, actually,” he says, and once the lyrics start she suddenly feels the weight and beauty of them that much more. It is _him,_ utterly so. It is beauty, pain, loneliness and yearning, and she has heard enough of his past, from both his own lips and Margie and Bronn’s, to know why it fits him so well. Sansa closes her eyes against the tears that well up.

“It’s _beautiful,_ ” she says, listens to the grunt of agreement that sounds deep in his chest. “I want this song,” she says with a sniffle, tilting her head back to regard him, and he frowns when he sees that she’s crying. “I want to dance with you to this song on our wedding day.”

“Whatever you want,” he says, and they both of them shift to their sides, heads propped in their hands as they face each other. Sandor touches the salt of her tears on her cheeks. “You crying for me, again?” And when she nods he sighs and kisses her, rolling her on to her back. “You don’t have to cry for me anymore. I’m happy now. You make me so happy, Sansa,” he says, over and over again, stopping only to kiss her mouth, her throat, down and down, and she replies with _I love you, I love you so much_ as he pushes her shirt up to kiss her stomach and the tops of her breasts.

It’s all of a sudden warm out here when they squirm free of their clothes, when she’s got the feel of him inside her, when he’s on his back with her above him, their fingers laced together as he holds her hands, bears the weight of her as she loves him, loves him, loves him. Their wedding song rolls around in her head as they move together and come together, as she pants out _I love you_ and he answers _I know you do, I know you do._ When her orgasm is a faded blush as she drapes herself over him, catching her breath, Sansa is happy, so _happy_ that he knows he is so deliciously loved.

They’re half-dressed and half asleep by the time the meteor shower arrives, and it’s like white, blazing tracks of rain across the window pane of the sky. They pushed the plates into grass so they could burrow under the blanket together, as it’s there they lie as they watch, as she _Oohs_ occasionally when a fireball streaks above them in its final blaze of glory.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he murmurs when she turns her head from the sky to rest her cheek against his chest, pulling the blanket to her chin as she hitches a bare leg over his thighs.

“I’m not,” she says as she closes her eyes, visions of meteors falling to earth in her head, sounds of acoustic guitar in her ears, Sandor in her heart, and it’s a dream of bleach blonde grass and wild horses racing shooting stars that catches her when she falls. It’s a dream she’d like to live in for a long, long time, but she is denied that pleasure, is shaken awake after what feels like only seconds, though the sun is already perched like a bird of paradise in the sky when she finally, blearily opens her eyes. Sandor’s face looms above hers, and it’s a tight expression of anger, terror, confusion and anxiety. Sansa’s heart pounds, and she feels fear immediately even in the vision-splintering light of what seems to be a dazzling spring morning.

“Get up, baby, we have to go. We have to go _now._ Goddammit,” he says, pushing himself to his feet, bare chested and barefoot in his levis as he paces the length of their little island of blankets, his black iPhone pressed to his ear. “Answer your fucking phone, asshole.”

Sansa sits up, disoriented and half blind, feeling half hung over from such little sleep. “What’s going on, Sandor, what’s wrong?” She is in her shirt and panties and nothing else, feels baldly exposed even though there’s no one around for acres. After groping around for them she finds her jeans and wriggles into the under the blanket, and she’s standing and buttoning them up when he finally snarls with irritation, throwing his phone to the blankets with a _Goddammit motherfucker._ Sandor sucks in a breath, presses his palms to his face and sweeps them up his forehead and into his hair, a valiant attempt at self-mastery, however shaky it is.  

“It’s Genna. Oh God, Sansa, I _just_ missed Margie’s call. She said they were jumping on the bed and Genna fell off. She thinks she broke her arm and they’re in the _fucking_ hospital in Tucson. So please, for fuck’s sake, let’s just get out of here,” he says, grabbing his shirt and pulling it over his head as he strides past her and up to the house.

She has never run barefoot so fast in all her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who thinks this is too sappy for Sandor to do, I want to say that when we were engaged, my gun toting, big-game hunting, beer making, 6'7" bearded kung fu teacher husband did this for me, complete with picnic at the end. SO IT CAN HAPPEN
> 
> Special Tom Waits shout out with Sandor's first note to Sansa.
> 
> Special shout out to a Tumblr buddy YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part two of two.
> 
>  
> 
> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/110876629233/kiss-him-back-chapter-4-feels)

April 2015

 

They hurtle down the interstate towards Tucson, Sandor with a fistful of steering wheel in one hand and his head held up with the other and his elbow on the console, as if his thoughts are so heavy that staying upright requires the additional help. The cab of his truck is silent save for the white static blur and buzz of the world whipping them by, save for the _tocktocktock_ of Sansa typing out text after text beside him as she learns where they need to go. It is hard for him here in this sickening place of uncertainty not to get mired in the sludge of memory, not to call back firmly tamped down hauntings and shadows, fire and ash and the looming figure of his own personal tormentor. _I was only ten,_ and even the voice in his head is a bitter sounding one as he thinks _I was only ten but she’s half that, so tiny, so little._ He remembers his pain vividly, bright and blinding like the fire itself was, and he swears that if she’s in a fraction of that pain he will tear the world apart for the injustice of it all.

“Sandor? Sandor.” Sansa’s voice, low and hushed as if she’s talking to him in a church or at a funeral, is still enough to cut through his thoughts, and he glances at her from under his hand as if he needed shade from the brightness of her.

“What,” he says, the word dropping useless and unwanted from his mouth, and he’s got time to catch the hurt look on her face, the way she bites down on her lower lip before he has to return his attention to the road. He has no room in his heart or his mind for manners or thinking before he speaks, not right now when he’s imagining Genna sobbing hysterically with several bones sticking out of her arm.  But this is Sansa here with him, and it takes him a moment to remember what that means, to remember he does not go it alone anymore. He remembers how she ran up the hill after him not thirty minutes earlier, slapping the dried grass and thorns from her feet as she hopped to her room for flip flops, how she tossed him his keys on her way out the front door. He caught them midair, midstride, was her shadow as he slammed the door behind them and jogged after her to the truck. They are a well-oiled machine, _together._ Sandor sighs, hauls himself into a more upright position and lifts his head, reaches out his right hand to find her, to bring himself back to her.

“I’m sorry,” he emphasizes, taking a moment to master himself, to steel himself against the whip and stir and anger-fear inside him.  “I’m just scared out of my fucking mind right now,” he says as he pushes his fingers between hers, and she curls hers around the back of his hand, and Sandor thinks of anchors holding back ships at sea.

“I know you are, but it’s going to be okay. Genna’s okay. Margie told me they’re at the Diamond Center at UMC, I guess it’s got a pediatric orthopedics center,” she says, and he nods as if he has always known this. A fresh wave of suspected incompetence washes through him, something he hasn’t felt in a long time, and it nips and bites and chews at him. “They were referred there from the ER after, after um, they took X-Rays.”

“And?” He grits his teeth as he glances over his shoulder to switch lanes, already anticipating the off ramp he’ll take in fifteen minutes, listens to Sansa as she relays Margie’s texts and tells him about a closed, single fracture and a temporary cast, tells him Genna is doing just fine though she misses her daddy, and it’s that which breaks him. “Goddammit, I could punch something,” he snarls, and if he could he’d slam his fist into the steering wheel, but they’re rocketing towards town at nearly 85mph so he simply squeezes the wheel tighter, wishing he could squeeze it to dust.

“You’ve got to calm down, Sandor. Genna needs you to be calm, and so do I. She needs her daddy, right now, so don’t make it WWIII, okay?” He’d like to snap at her that she doesn’t understand, but he supposes she must, as bleached out and terrified as she looks when he steals another glance her way. She’s got her uncombed hair pulled back into a ponytail, higher on her head than he wears his, and it exacerbates the drawn look on her face.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, Sansa, I am. I’m sorry,” he repeats, saying it to her as much as to Genna for this sorry, awful shit situation they’re all in. He thinks about campfires and ten year old boys, thinks about his brother whose only two gifts to him are half a face of scars and a little girl Sandor now calls his daughter. It’s with a nauseating twist in his gut that he realizes out of both Clegane brothers, _he_ is the only one to have let pain and suffering come down on Genna. _Only on my watch, and I wasn’t even watching her._

Sandor could punch himself.

 

Sansa tells herself he’s too wrapped up in concern and fear and _guilt_ , knowing him, knowing _any_ parent really; she tells herself that’s why he’s already walking through the parking lot towards the main entrance when she’s just slammed her car door shut, but then he stops, shoulders rounded up from his stance of self-preservation. She wants to say words like _I’m sorry, baby_ and _She’s going to be okay_ and _These things happen all the time_ but her initial attempt to speak in the car was met with first a grunt and then stony silence. Now is not the time for platitudes, and Sandor is not the man for them even on the best of days. The hour and the man call for silent support, and she thinks of brick walls and ramparts when she catches up to him and slides her hand in his, thinks of an army of two, and when she realizes that’s what a marriage is she almost smiles. But then the doors slide open and reality slaps her in the face by way of cold, sterilized air and the white-bright overdone of a hospital’s attempt at cheeriness.

Hot air balloons and painted blue skies greet them in the vaulted ceiling lobby, a toy train track coursing high above their heads and disappearing through a little tunnel in the interior wall. It’s cute, undeniably so, but right now it feels gaudy and cheap despite how expensive this part of UMC looks. Sandor snorts at the décor, and she knows it’s only adding to his stress levels and irritation; he is practically humming with both like an electrified fence. She thinks he’d tear apart those hot air balloons with his bare hands if he could, and she sends a text as quick as she can before he decides to try it out.

**Sansa:** We’re here 

**Margie:** Thank god, sending Bronn to get you. 

“I want to see my kid. Genna Clegane,” Sandor says to one of the receptionists behind the front desk, rough enough to shock the cheerful smile off her face. She’s a look of disbelief above clean, bright scrubs smattered with bubbly cartoon hearts, and Sansa squeezes his hand before letting go and stepping forward.

“Sorry, but our- his daughter is here, she’s got a broken arm and is waiting for a cast up in orthopedics. We’ve got a friend coming to meet us, though, so we’re okay,” she says, and there is the smallest huff of indignation before the hearts-covered nurse nods and replaces the chased away smile with a fresh, albeit smaller one. “Come on, baby,” she says to Sandor when she turns to face him, nodding with her head towards the front of the lobby furthest from the desk, but then there’s the sound of footsteps, and then there’s Bronn rounding the corner of the curving hallway. He looks _horrible;_ his hair is standing up on end as if he’s been electrocuted or at an all-night rave, there are dark circles under his haunted eyes and he is emanating agitation so thickly Sansa can feel it from here. She braces herself.

“You son of a bitch,” Sandor snarls, stalking forward, earning himself gasps from the two women behind the front desk. Bronn stops in his tracks immediately, hands flying up as if he’s surrendering to police, shoulders hunching up as if expecting a grizzly bear attack. _Which isn’t so far off the mark._

“Hey, man, just calm down, all right? Genna’s okay, I swear to God,” he says.

“ _Okay?_ A fucking broken arm is _okay_ on your watch? What happened to Lady, is she roadkill now?” Sansa glances back when one of the receptionists gasps _Sir, please control yourself._

“Sandor, stop it,” she says, striding after him, wrapping both hands around his bicep when his right arm draws back, fist clenched. Bronn glances at her, shaking his head infinitesimally before looking back to Sandor. _Oh, but he’s a menace_ , she thinks. He’s nearly big enough to look like he belongs in a room this size, here in this lobby of too-high ceiling and open floor plan.

“Stay out of it Sansa, I can handle him, I have for 20 years,” Bronn says, eyes on his aggressor when Sandor says _Oh you think so, asshole?_ “Yeah, I _know_ so, and here’s why. It could have happened on your watch, on Sansa’s, Loras’s, anyone’s. We were just jumping on the bed, okay? You take that kid on a four wheeler without a helmet, for chrissakes. It was _just_ jumping on the bed.”

“Are you calling me a shitty father?” Sandor shouts, and Sansa is tugged behind him like a toy dog on a leash when he takes two steps forward, but she regains her footing in time to dash back to his side, and she reaches up to grab his face in one hand. He startles at the touch, pauses his advancement towards Bronn to look down at her in surprise.

“Hey, you calm down _right this minute,_ buddy, or they’re going to call the cops and you won’t see Genna until I figure out how to post bail,” she snaps, keeping his jaw firmly in her grasp as she moves around his side to stand in front of him. “I told you before you need to stay calm for Genna, and you’re doing a really bad job of it right now. Bronn’s right, it could have happened to _any_ of us. Genna jumps on our bed all the time, she races Loras down the hill at Hops & Vines. She used to stand and walk around on the kitchen island, for God’s sake. It doesn’t make _any_ of us bad parents or babysitters, all right? So just, please, calm _down,_ or you’re going to make her even more upset when you see her. You’re already upsetting me, so let’s not make it two for two.”

She’s got her high school teacher face on, she can tell: the hot flare behind her eyes and the near-ache in her jaw from how firmly she’s setting in right now feels an awful lot like classes on Friday afternoons, and it seems to do the trick. He doesn’t break eye contact, and for several moments they glare at each other, Sandor ensnared in the pinch of her fingers on his jawbone, his chest a heave and drop, heave and drop as he tries to rein himself in. It’s neither a stalemate nor a win for either of them, but it _is_ pushing the pause button, and she’s the one with the remote control today. Finally he swallows, closes his eyes and nods, and when he opens his eyes again there is less a storm in the grey of them.

“Fine,” he says, and she nods curtly, loosens the viselike grip she has on him, slides her palm to the beard of his good cheek, holds him there a moment before dropping her hand and turning to Bronn.

“Okay, let’s go,” she says briskly, ignoring his look of incredulity as she walks towards him, glancing over her shoulder to apologize to the ladies at the front desk before they disappear down the hallway. It’s a quiet walk save for the faint echo of footsteps and while Sansa is full of questions she thinks it’s likely a wise choice on Bronn’s behalf to keep mum, and so she follows his lead and keeps her mouth shut as well.

The take an uncomfortable albeit blissfully short elevator ride to the pediatric orthopedics floor, Sansa and Sandor following as Bronn leads them down hallways and through doorways, and if it wasn’t so bright and cheerfully decorated it would feel like an underground rabbit warren. Nurses occasionally bustle past, and while they have a kind word or a smile of greeting for Bronn in the lead, once they catch sight of Sandor they all raise their eyebrows and duck their heads, eyes wide in disbelief at such a terrifying sight. Sansa feels oddly proud of this.

Bronn stops outside of the half closed door to a single occupancy room and turns to face them. He tells them in a low voice that Genna was sedated before they set the bone and has been fitted now with her permanent fiberglass cast, which is neon pink per her groggy request, and will likely be fully awake within the hour.

“Now listen,” he says, the edge to his voice sharp as a needle and just as thin, and there is a pointed finger held in the air between them as Bronn places his body in front of the open doorway. “Margie is beyond upset about this, and she’s- that’s my wife in there. If you so much as aim _one_ word of blame in her direction I will rip your fucking balls off, do you hear?”

Sansa sighs, drops her head into her hand and rubs her forehead a moment as these two throw their weight and testosterone around. They’ve got their individual and completely valid reasons for being so worked up but it’s starting to become exasperating. Sandor and Bronn are treating this place like an old dive bar and not the place of quiet and healing that it should be.

“He’ll be fine, won’t you Sandor?” She looks up at him, watches the muscles in his jaw working, sees the pained look in his eyes that has overcome the anger that erupted downstairs in the lobby. He nods, and when he says _Yeah, I’ll be fine_ his voice is hoarse and froggy, cracked like dried out clay.

The only light in the room comes from through the open blinds covering the window, and there is a view of the Catalina Mountains that nestle up against the north of Tucson like giant sleeping beasts. The sky and city glitter under a cheerful sun. _No one told the sun that Genna broke her arm,_ she thinks sadly when she sees how _small_ she looks in the bed, with the dark fans of her lashes against her cheeks and her little cupid bow mouth slack from sedation. Sandor sidesteps Sansa in one swift movement and enters the room fully, whispers a _Jesus Christ_ when he sees Genna, and he stops in his tracks at the foot of the bed. He lifts his hands and drags them through his tied back hair, drawing up little half-moon loops of it with the motion, reminding her of the wild way Genna had yanked on his hair when she first met them both. It tugs on her heartstrings.

“Sandor,” Margie says, standing swiftly from the chair between the bed and the window, and before she can take two steps towards him Bronn is a slink and dart into the room like a snake through the grass. He turns to face Sandor and holds an arm out behind him, his hand a cup against his wife’s hip.

“I’m _serious,_ man,” Bronn says, but if they expect an outburst they will not get one, not with Genna so laid up in front of him. Sansa could have told them that. He’s said countless times how utterly _hers_ he is, but she knows it’s really the little girl in the hot pink cast who has him wrapped around her little finger, just as it should be.

“It’s okay, whatever,” he mutters, trying to squeeze between the foot of the bed and Sansa, to get to Genna’s left side so he won’t disturb the cast on her right arm, but Margie reaches out and grabs his wrist. She’s a wild bramble of blonde hair and hastily thrown together outfit, much like the rest of them, but her bright eyes are dank with misery and self-inflicted blame. She’s a walking, talking wound.

“Sandor, _please,_ ” she says, and now that she’s up close Sansa can see her face is completely soaked with tears, that she’s actively crying right now.  It’s like being inside a rain cloud in this cool, dim little room, wet with Margie’s tears, dark and grey with the turmoil of Sandor’s emotions. He turns to her now, his back to Sansa, bows his head as she speaks. She tell him that Bronn and Genna were both bouncing on the bed when she came into the room, that Genna spun around to say hello and lost her balance and slammed into the nightstand. “I’m so- I’m so sorry,” she says, “It was just bouncing on the bed, Sandor, it was no big deal,” and her voice warbles, peters out into an incoherent sob, and Sansa finds her chin is trembling when she cups a hand over her mouth as Sandor pulls Margie in for a hug.

“It’s okay, Marge, all right? She’s okay, it’s okay. You’re all right. Go back to town now, we’ll sit with her until she wakes up and then we’ll take her home.” The hug is brief but not unkind, and he pats her upper arm before pulling away to stand vigil by his daughter’s bedside.

Sansa has a chance to hug her friend now, and it’s fierce, the way Margie clings to her as she whispers hoarsely over and over that she’s so sorry, when she tells her that they aren’t going to leave until Genna is cleared to go home.

“Are you sure you’re okay, honey?” Bronn asks, hand on his wife’s shoulder as he peers down at her with concern. “I mean, you—”

“I’m calming down, I’m fine,” she says testily as she draws away from Sansa, wiping her cheeks with the press and sweep of her fingers, and Sansa can see how this incident has taken its toll on Margie as well. Her heart goes out to them both for how horrible an ordeal it must have been, a bright and cheery morning turned on its head in a nanosecond. “We’ll wait outside, okay?”

Sansa closes the door behind them and takes possession of Margie’s chair on the other side of the bed, and for the next 45 minutes she gazes unwaveringly at her fiancé as he squats down and rests his chin on the edge of the bed, his arm outstretched on the mattress towards Genna’s hand, his thick forefinger finding its way in the curl of her little palm.

He does not move until she wakes.

 

It takes two hours of cartoons on the sofa under a blanket before Genna is comfortable enough to eat, and Sandor feels like a tabletop, sitting here half beside her and half beneath her, covered in crumbs and apple pips as she chews on peanut butter and crackers, apple slices and a cut up string cheese. Sansa makes him smile for the first time since last night when she calls him a stray dog after catching him idly eating whatever chunk of cracker or cheese he finds on his chest, and he’s more grateful for the humor than he can express with words. She spends the afternoon grading the last of her tests, texting Margie to assure her they’re all fine, calling and thanking Loras for taking Briar home and cleaning up the remnants of their outdoor picnic. It’s nearly five when she finally settles in on the other side of Genna, tucking herself under the blanket that’s making him sweat, under the fawnlike legs of his kid as she stretches and sprawls out on top of them both.

“I’m glad we had a nice night yesterday, considering this is the seventh episode of Sid the Science Kid I’ve watched,” he says, lifting the arm draped over Genna’s body to stretch it along the backside of the sofa, and he lets his fingers find and slide up her shoulder to the nape of her neck. “Not my idea of a stellar date.” Sansa tips her head into his touch, and with just the upward drift of his hand he has the feel of her cheek under his fingertips.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she murmurs, resting her forearm on Genna’s hip, patting her knee as the five year old burrows deeper under the blanket, her head sinking from his chest to his stomach, and he slouches deeper to accommodate her. “This is pretty nice to me _,_ ” and she turns such a rich, warm gaze towards him that suddenly the annoying songs from the cartoon fade to black, blend into the late afternoon glow. He smiles for a second a time.

Genna falls asleep before the sun even sets, and Sansa gingerly plucks the remote from her lap, the stretch of motion bringing her closer to his side, and he is able to wrap his right arm around her shoulders as she finds a movie for them to watch. The light in this wide room fades and greys, feathers and weathers at the edges until it’s a space lit with the flicker and flash and boom of some superhero movie. The stifling heat of the blanket and Genna’s warm little body becomes a welcome one as the air cools around them. Sandor and Sansa sink towards one another until the caps of their shoulders touch, and they all three form a slumped and crooked sort of A where Genna is the little ladder across their laps.

“Earlier today, in the hospital, you said ‘our,’” he says during a quiet lull of plot exposition, and her fingers still where they are combing through Genna’s hair. “’Our,’ about Genna.” Sansa sucks in a breath and takes her hand from his daughter’s head, curls her fingers into her palm midair as if she is afraid to touch anything now. He turns away from the television to look at her, the spoon-curve dip of the bridge of her nose and the downcast eyes, the unearthly pale of her skin in the underwater waver of TV screen lighting. When she speaks it is to the blanket and little girl legs covering her lap.

“I did, I’m sorry. It was, you know, the heat of the moment, and you were so upset, I just, it slipped out. I jumped the gun, I guess. I hope I didn’t step on your toes or anything.” Sandor huffs, slides his arm from her shoulders so he can take her by the chin, much as she did to him earlier though with far less authoritative firmness. She looks at him, half her face in light, the other in shadow, and he smiles, shakes his head.

“I didn’t mean it that way. I uh, I liked it. I want you to feel that way. Jesus, I’ve been hoping you would come to feel that way, eventually,” and here she smiles. It’s shy and tender, reminds him of when they first started opening up to one another, when she told him of her past and danced her eyes across his tattoos, when he told her about Gregor and she wept tears for his past.

“Well, I mean, I can’t _help_ but love her in that capacity.  But still, I don’t, you know, we’re not even family yet, not until August. I just don’t want to push you too hard, or overstep my bounds or anything. _What?_ What’s so wrong with that?” she asks when he rolls his eyes, and he chuckles at her indignation. _An instant spark that can start a wildfire with her,_ he thinks, and he likes her that way.

“There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but if you’re not family then neither am I. She’s not my daughter but she _is,_ so who’s to say she isn’t yours, either? _Family_ has nothing to do with blood or weddings or any of that other shit,” he says, and she sighs with a smile, tips her head against the back of the couch as she looks at him.

“Is that right? Since when did you get all wise, hmm?” she asks, and he laughs, Genna’s head a mouse-bounce on his stomach from the force of it, though she does not wake. Sansa’s hand meets his own when they both go to brush back the lock of hair that’s fallen into her eyes. He looks back up at her, thinks of the way she pinned him in place at the hospital, the way she swept between him and Bronn, the way she can snap her fingers and make him come running or stand still.

“Since you, sunshine,” he says, and he thinks the last time she gave him this kind of look was right after he slid a ring onto her finger.

 Before long the three of them are in a sort of half recline on the sofa, Sansa a wedge between his hip and the back of the couch, Genna a sprawl on top of them, and even though his feet are still on the floor and he’s more or less sitting upright, he finds he cannot keep his eyes open. Genna’s got her cast thrown across his torso and Sansa’s arm is just beneath it, spooned up together as they are on top of him, and even though he’s drowsing he attempts recovery.

“We gotta go to bed, we’re like a bunch of bums out here,” he mutters, but Sansa hums and shakes her head against his ribs.

“So we’re a pack of stray dogs together,” she says with a sigh, her arm tightening around his middle, making his eyes close for the night. “Family’s family.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/123476493908/jillypups-kiss-him-back-chapter-5-feels-and)

May, 2015

 

It’s a memory more than a dream, Sansa knows it, though the one has slipped and melted and puddled into the other: a brush of his thumb across her chin and down her jaw, the four points of his fingertips somewhere along her hairline. That thumb again on her lower lip, press and a drag as he draws it down away from her teeth until her mouth opens from panting pressure. She inhales to say his name but then the touch is gone, and she does not remember now, only that her mouth is open and hungry, open and empty of the one thing she wanted to say more than anything. It’s a dark drift halfway back to slumber, it’s a sigh, legs a twist in the sheets, and somewhere a woman arches her back to get closer to a grey eyed man, and there is the sensation of her hands on his back, the threat and bite of her name gritted out in her ear.  _Sansa._

His name, his name, his name, her jaws closing shut on his name, and then she’s awake.

“Sandor?”

She opens her eyes only to close them immediately against the brilliant splinter of morning coming through the windows, lifts a hand to cup across her left cheek before opening them again, swears one day they’ll get blinds, knowing she could never rob him of his daybreak.  _But maybe one day we’ll move the bed._  After her eyes adjust she stretches her arms out to the sides, sliding her palms against the mattress, already knowing she’s alone here, and there’s an ill suppressed whimper and mutter of disappointment when she finally sits up. She could have sworn he was here somewhere within reach, close enough to snare, but it’s an empty room of furniture and photographs, his desk, the hamper, remnants from last night’s tea party with Elmo and Ariel there on the floor. With a flip of her hair over one shoulder she sighs, glances at his alarm clock to check the time, though she’s damn near getting as good as he, when it comes to guessing by sunlight.

She smiles.

There is a sweating glass of iced tea waiting for her on his nightstand by the clock that reads 7:19am, and she folds her legs into tailor position as she leans over for it. They’ve yet to turn on the air conditioning and while the overhead fan spins high above her the cold glass is a welcome chill in her hands. He brought her tea and didn’t even wake her, but then  _Oh, yes he did,_  and she lowers the glass from her mouth to run her fingers along her lip. How a man like Sandor Clegane can be so sneaky and feather light, she’ll never stop wondering, but she’ll never mind it, either.

The sound of a dog barking interrupts the silence of this house, a silence that used to make her think of cold stones and empty hallways, a silence that now makes her think of skin warmed sheets and the way a flower can be closed one moment and open the next.  _He makes me feel like a flower,_  she thinks to herself as she stands to seek out the source of the noise, and she hopes she makes him feel as precious as he does her. It’s a handful of steps to the stretch of windows Sandor’s desk butts up against, and she walks around it, sets her glass down by his orchid before folding arms across her chest and standing nearly nose to pane as she smiles.

Lady is a brushstroke of tricolor fur as she races across the flat part of land beyond the greenhouse, a blurred boomerang as she streaks back to where she came from, and Sansa has to cross to the other side of the desk to see where she’s running, and there he is, the culprit of sleeping touches and iced tea love notes. Sandor picks up whatever Lady dropped off only to immediately twist his torso back, arm a half-bent outstretch behind him before he flings the object once more. It is a boy and his dog, and if she had one of those fancy cameras like Margie she’d be snapping pictures like a madwoman. As it is all she has are her eyes, and so she watches as Sandor throws the ball or stick over and over, squats down to let Lady gambol around him, half leap on his bent knees, lick his face.

She grins, unable to help herself, spins on her bare heel and takes up her iced tea in one hand, stoops by her dresser to pick up her Sorel slippers in the other, and she quickly pads down the hall to the main room, taking a moment to peek in past the half-closed door of Genna’s room. She is sound asleep, her little cast poking out of the covers, forgotten and used to now after a few weeks. Sansa tiptoe-trots across the shade cool front room to the sliding door before setting her slippers down and stepping into them, pushes open the door and leaves it ajar so they can hear if Genna hollers for them, so she will take it as a visual clue to their whereabouts if she wakes.

“Hey big bad,” she says when she’s just past the greenhouse, his bare back to her as he flings the object of Lady’s infatuation another time, and much as she loves the dog she is all eyes for him when he looks over his shoulder, face already cracked into a grin at the sound of her voice. He abandons his sport to turn in full and walk towards her, shoulders moving in time to his steps, and she thinks of words like  _summer_ and _love_  when he takes her glass from her hand.

“Hey little bird,” he says after taking three long swallows, wiping his beard on his forearm before handing the glass back. Sandor runs his palms down her shoulders, giving the muscles of her arms a brief squeeze before plucking at the hem of her long sleeved pajama top, fingers a graze on her belly, bringing up a memory and making her shiver under a water color sky.

“Thanks for the tea,” she says, looking up at him with a sun-spangled squint. The day’s just begun but that doesn’t mean it’s not bright out here, where the only divide between earth and sky are the gossamer clouds above, goose down tugged free from a pillowcase. “Although you could have lingered a little longer in that big empty bed, you know,” and here his grin widens, because he knows what he was doing.  _Rotten man,_  she thinks, grinning right back at him.

“Lady was jumping all over me, she would have woken you  _both_ up, and that would have been the end of _anything_ going on in that big empty bed, including sleep,” he says, lifting a hand to rub her mouth with his thumb once more, but Sansa is awake now, fueled by the onslaught of caffeine, and she nips him, front teeth a click on his nail, and he hisses an inhale.

“Your loss,” she says when he tugs himself free from the bite, and he is clearly about to retaliate with that step towards her but it is Lady to the rescue with the rustle of long fur through the dried out blades of grass. She is a four-pawed dance around them, a figure eight weave between Sansa’s bare legs and Sandor’s pajama pants, and Sansa turns away from him to follow her dog’s movements.

“Believe me, baby doll, it’s your loss too, considering we’re about to have one guest or another in our house for the next couple of months,” he says, and she rolls her eyes because it’s all true; they’ll be picking up Rickon and Arya this afternoon before Margie’s twice -postponed birthday party.

“Then you should have struck while the iron was hot,” she says, and she’s about to take a sip of her tea when he closes the distance between them with a sudden scoop and drag of his arm around her waist, pulling her clean out of one of her slippers, heelless as they are, and she squeals to feel the rough rocks and stubbly grass beneath her sleepy sensitive foot. “Shit, sorry,” he says, and then it’s  _Goddammit, dog,_  because in her impatience for Sandor to throw what turns out to be a dried out piece of sotol, Lady has snatched one of Sansa’s expensive slippers. Sandor laughs as Sansa stands one-footed in the loop of his arm, back to his chest, and she rolls her eyes.

“Lady!” she yells, but the crafty Aussie shepherd is already halfway up the hill towards the house. “You spoil that dog, you know,” she says with a huff as she glances up and back at him, but it’s only half a second of admonishment that he stands around for. In no time he steps around her, bends down as if on one knee in front of her, and then she’s hauled up and over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as he stands, ass in the air and upside down with his bare back in her face. Her tea is an arc of ice cubes and lemon wedge as it splashes to the ground behind him, and she clutches her glass for fear of it shattering on hard packed earth.

“I spoil  _all_  my girls,” he says with a firm slap to the back of her bare thigh, just beneath the pair of jersey shorts she always sleeps in, and he laughs all the way up the hill no matter how loud she shrieks, no matter how often she presses her ice cold glass against his back to punish him, no matter how hard she tries to slap him back, fabulous view as she has.

 

Rickon watches the landscape zoom into focus as their plane descends into Tucson, brown to green and back again, mountain chains surrounding the city looking like rumpled blankets on the edges of a flat mattress. Even though he has flown once before to visit Robb up in Alaska with his father, he keeps his mind and his eye on the slow-but-sure focus of ant-sized trees and cars and houses, anything to ignore the lurch and dip and slosh of his gut as they barrel towards the earth.

“Did you hear that noise? I hope we’re not going to crash,” Arya whispers in his ear, and he rolls his eyes before he glares at her, anything to mask the spike of terror her words inspired.

“Don’t be a dick,” he hisses, glancing across the aisle at the rather stern old lady giving him and his tattooed arms the eagle eye. “I swear to God the only reason you’re even coming with me is ‘cause mom and dad don’t trust me,” he says. He has been 17 for three days, has gotten his grades up to a solid B average and hasn’t so much as looked at a joint ever since he started his apprenticeship. In his mind this is ample proof he’s capable of behaving himself, but here he is, sitting in the window seat by his 22 year old sister. _Babysitter, more like it,_ he thinks, and then the plane dips its nose towards the ground, and he grits his teeth, grips the arm rests and looks straight ahead where his knees are shoved against the seat in front of him.

“I’m here because I’m between jobs, if you must know,” his sister sniffs, resting one leg on her knee as she looks at her bitten fingernails, utterly unmoved by the fact that they are streaking towards the earth like a misfired rocket. He gives her a look and she shrugs. “Believe me or don’t, but I think they would have let you go alone if I hadn’t stuck my big nose in it, asking when you were going. Mom even said you were _excelling_ in school the other day. I don’t think she’s ever said that about me, let alone you,” and he’s grinning with his eyes closed, even when the plane touches down with a sickening bounce.

“It’s about time I became the favorite,” he says dryly once they’ve pulled into the gate, and Arya laughs, her classic _whoop_ that amuses half the crowd and irritates the other, but when they are finally allowed to stand and he towers over most of them with a sullen look, the scowls seem to slide away from his sister.

“I know we’ve already seen them together but I wonder how different it will be here, you know? Like, on _their_ turf and in _their_ house,” Arya says, wrapping the cord of her earbuds around her fingers before hiking up the ratty old sundress she’s wearing to tuck them in the pocket of her jeans. He’s probably as mismatched put together as she is, in untied combat boots and cutoff black Dickies that hang just to his knees, but they were told to dress lightly, and this is as light as it gets for Arya and Rickon.

“The land of cowboy Sandor,” he says with a grin. He met the guy over Christmas break and liked him instantly, but even in clean cut sweaters sitting by their mom at dinner it wasn’t hard to imagine him on a horse, or covered in dirt surrounded by cacti and sun bleached grass, or any one of the myriad things Sansa has described.

“ _Stud_ muffin Sandor,” Arya says with a wispy, overblown southern drawl and a hand pressed to her chest, and they both laugh. To say Sansa is head over heels is an understatement, and while he isn’t privy to the details like his other sister is, Arya has shared enough to make him understand how deeply in love she is. _Swoon-worthy shit,_ Arya told him once, and when he relayed it all to Shireen she smiled, set his blood to boil when she told him she understands the sentiment exactly.

They both packed light; Arya’s pulling a beat-up carryon on wheels behind her and he’s got Robb’s old hockey bag slung over his shoulder, but while they don’t have to hit up the baggage claim they head that direction anyway. Sansa told them it’s a small airport, that the way to the parking lot is in the same direction, and as they ride the short escalator down to ground level they make idle bets on how hot it’s going to be for a wedding in August in the desert.

“But it’s a dry heat,” they say in unison with their fingers held in the air. It’s Sansa’s cheerful, earnest reassurance that they’ve all heard a thousand times, and they’re laughing as they step off onto solid ground, Arya’s flip flops a bright slap to the tile as they look around for about two seconds before picking Sandor and Sansa out of the crowd.

“No shit, she remembered,” he says with a laugh when he reads the sign their sister holds up: _ARRY & FIDO_ it reads, Arya’s nickname since Bran was a toddler and his own since Sansa was a kid and wanted a dog so bad she made him one. They look about as different as different can be; Sansa is a tall woman but no match for Sandor, and he is dark where she is light, static and silent where she is a ribbon in the breeze, laughter over the phone. But one thing they have in common is contentment. He’s not an expert but he’s the youngest of five in a closely knit household, and there’s peace in Sandor’s arm around his sister’s waist, there’s happiness in that merest sliver of light between their bodies, they stand that close together.

She is sunshine in a summer dress, a smile bouncing on the balls of her feet as they approach her, and her energy and excitement are infectious. Arya shoves the extended handle of her carryon in his hand and takes off at a run, and his two sisters squeal and spin as they launch themselves into one another’s arms, the paper sign a crumple in Sansa’s hand when she hugs Arya. He and Sandor nod at each other, grasp hands and bump shoulders by way of greeting. He’s in a white t-shirt and looks all the larger for it, is all the more menacing with the thick beard, and Rickon can’t help but rub his chin at the thought of growing something like that.

“Rickon, my man,” he says, clapping a hand on his back. “New art, I see.” Sandor gestures to his forearm and he looks down with a grin. There is now a thin scroll that winds around and around his left arm ending in a forked tail on the back of his hand. Written inside the scroll is the meandering alphabet in spidery lettering, the **_R_** and **_S_** bolded and capitalized to stand out.

“Shireen’s as usual, though I did do this little guy,” he says, turning his right arm over to show his wrist, and Sandor raises his eyebrows at the outline of bones, as detailed as an X-ray. It was delicate, painstaking work, and he is immensely proud of it. “It’s kind of a bitch, working on yourself, but you know. Practice.”

“Nice job,” he nods. “Shireen still coming down for the wedding?” and when Rickon tells him yes, asks _You planning on getting something new,_ Sandor shrugs. “Might be,” he says, and they grin at each other as Sansa yanks Rickon away, the hockey bag swinging across his back from the force of her affection.

“Little brother, you are walking, talking graffiti,” she says as she looks him up and down with a shake of her head before flinging her arms around his middle, and he stoops accordingly to receive the hug. Sansa pulls back to regard him, beaming happily as she ruffles the top of his shaggy, overgrown mohawk. He smoothes it back once she’s finished, grins at his sister as he regards her.

“And you’re browner than a nut,” he says. She’ll never be as tan as Sandor but it’s night and day, snow to honey how she used to be up in Washington and how she is now, with a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks, her shoulders too once Rickon flicks her hair away. “It’s better than turning the color of your hair, which I guess is what’s gonna happen to me after a couple of months down here.”

“Where’s Genna?” Arya says after hugging Sandor in a comical display of height difference; he’s got over a foot and a half on her, and it looks like he’s leaning down to hug Santa’s elf when Arya stretches up to greet their future brother in law.

“She’s already at the party waiting for you guys,” Sandor says, and Arya snaps her fingers as her memory seems to jog up to meet the rest of them.

“That’s right, Margie’s birthday. Pretty cool she postponed it ‘til we could make it down,” she says, and Sandor and Sansa exchange a glance.

“We-ell,” Sansa says slowly, linking her arm with Rickon’s as they walk towards the sliding doors leading out to the drop off area and the parking lot beyond it. “There was an um, an accident a few weeks ago. Genna kind of broke her arm at their place, and they decided to wait until all of the, you know, the _excitement_ died down.”

“I was really pissed off for a while there,” Sandor clarifies, and the bald truth of it compared to the sugar and spice of Sansa’s explanation makes Arya snort with a snicker, and their eldest sister swats her.

“ _Anyways._ I’m just so happy you can spend your summer vacation here,” Sansa says to Rickon as they step outside, and he’s about to tell her he’s pretty stoked too, but then a wall of heat hits him so forcefully his breath is knocked away. It is palpable, tangible, feels like something he could swim through, and he stops from the shock of it. The people around them move as if it’s a balmy day of 60 back up in Washington; some of them are even wearing jeans or long sleeved shirts, and his jaw drops from the uncanniness of it all.

“Jesus Christ,” he says with an exhale, and he and Arya look at each other. “What is it, like 100? It’s not even 3pm,” he says.

“Well, probably, but it’s cooler in Sonoita, I promise. Plus, you know, it’s a dry heat,” Sansa says brightly, and Rickon throws his head back and laughs.

 

She’s floating on air and not because of the sangria but because her siblings are here, a branch of the family tree spliced into the orchard of Sonoita, finally mixing in with the life she’s made for herself. It’s another Tyrell bonfire next to the barn where they said their vows last year, is all dropped open tailgates and the rollicking twang of Thompson Square playing, the flicker of flame and the dip and soar of conversation, and knowing there’s more than one Stark here now makes the evening all the more magical for it.

It’s a more intimate crowd than they had on their wedding day but with all the usual suspects, and she waves to Margie through the twilight blue when she catches her hostess’s eye. She wades through the clusters of conversation, deftly avoids her grandmother by pushing Jaime in Olenna’s path, and finally they stand side by side a moment chatting before Margie is swept away by a request for more ice.

Bronn is as excited as can be to meet her brother and sister, making Rickon turn around like a ballerina _en pointe_ as he checks out his tattoos, and when the party is in full swing he gives Arya not one but _two_ shots of tequila in the kitchen. Her sister is a wide eyed grin and an _I_ like _that guy_ before she dances her way back outside, shouting for Sandor to help her find a beer that doesn’t taste like water, to which Sandor says _Wrong party_ from the back of his long bed.

“You get my sister hammered, _you_ nurse her hangover,” Sansa says to Bronn from their doorway with a roll of her eyes before following Arya, and Renly holds open the screen for her before scooting inside with a grin on his face and a Coors Light in his hand.

“That’s what Hops & Vines is for, sugar, and don’t forget to come back and get your own,” he calls after her. “Ren, good, come here and grab your shot,” and Renly is a holler for Loras as Bronn pours the two of them their tequila. She can hear the slosh and spill as the screen door slaps shut behind her, and it’s back to this outdoor world of cool breezes and the smell of burning mesquite, of sunset skies and the inky shadow that bleeds in from the periphery until night is an official drop into place.

“Oh, I’m married, actually,” Arya says to Willas, both of them leaning against the wall enclosing the front yard full of roses. Willas’s hand is a grip on his cane while both of Arya’s are in her jeans pockets, sundress hitched up around her hips to allow it. “His name’s Gendry and he’s _amazing_. He’s coming down with the rest of us next month. I’m between jobs so I came with my brother, although between you and me, I kind of got fired,” she says, leaning towards him, and Sansa shoves her sister lightly on the shoulder as she walks by. “It’s not _my_ fault most people can’t take a joke,” she huffs before swigging some watery beer.

Sansa makes a note to sit someone special by Willas at the reception when she sees the strikeout look on his face at the mention of marriage, and she shuffles through faces of her single friends before she _Mmhmms_ to herself with a smile. She hasn’t been Margie’s friend for nothing, and Sansa has learned a thing or two since moving here over a year ago, is mentally patting herself on the back as she refills her sangria at the Coleman cooler perched on the edge of a picnic table.

“Write it like your arms do!” Genna shouts to Rickon though they are standing two feet apart, her sturdy little cast held out between them, and he finally gives in, folds his long legs as he sits his butt down in the dirt, the nearby fire an arch and glow behind him. He uses the light to draw with a sharpie some twisty sort of design on Genna’s cast, his dark head bowed over her arm, though with how many times she’s asked Loras to sign it, Sansa is surprised there’s any room left.

“There’s my girl,” Sandor says when she finally, _finally_ makes her way to his Silverado, handing him her plastic cup of sangria before climbing in after him. She leans back against his chest and they are two dominos knocked down together, his bent legs her armrests, his chest her pillow as they watch and listen to the party unfolding before them. Sandor runs a hand up her bare arm, fingers a slide under the spaghetti strap of her tank top, a brush against her clavicle, always so intimate even in the most innocent of surroundings.

“Hi, you,” she says, turning her head to the side and looking up at him, and he’s ready and waiting, there with a kiss, his tongue the quickest dart into her mouth before he pulls back to look at her.

“Happy, aren’t you, sunshine?” and she nods.

“Yeah, unbelievably so. Arya and Rickon being here, it’s the beginning of the whole big shindig. A summer long party,” she sighs, and Sandor chuckles. “Although really, I guess it all started when I met you, huh,” she says, reaching behind her to press her hand to the back of his neck, pulling him down so she might kiss him again. “I love you,” she says.

“I love you too,” he says. Sansa bites her lip, thinking of earlier this morning, of iced tea and afterthoughts, of feeling precious and wanting him to feel the same. She twists somewhat so she can better face him. The good side of his face is lit with amber and yellow and flickers of shadow, as warm and intense as the inside of his soul. The inside of her heart flares.

“I just hope you know how much I adore you,” she murmurs, because she lives in a house of love and she wants him to know he lives there too. Here he smiles, taps her on the nose.

“Let’s see here, if I know Sansa adores me,” he says, gazing to the sky in a mock-ponder that makes her laugh. “She makes me lunch so I don’t starve, even now that she’s a very busy teacher with her own stuff to worry about. She writes ridiculous _Roses are Red_ poems in the steam on the mirror while I shower. She doesn’t take any of my shit. She looks at me when no one else ever did, when no one else ever does. I feel pretty goddamn lucky. Although I think I’d feel even _luckier_ if she’d wear those shoes of hers when we—”

She shuts him up with a kiss, and there is a low hum, a sigh maybe, when he kisses her back, and he does not pull away until there is the metallic thunk of a cast on the tailgate, a sound they’re all too familiar with these days.

“Yuck, kisses!” Genna says cheerfully as Rickon gives her a boost up into the truck. She’s backlit from the bonfire and looks more wild than usual, the baby hairs around her face a flit and stir in the fickle wind though Sansa French braided it into pigtails that morning. Even in the poor lighting she can see his daughter – _our daughter? -_ is a mess, the knees of her leggings dusty with dirt, and there is a stain of Kool-Aid the size of her head on the front of her shirt.

“Totally, Genna. Yuck,” Rickon says, and he grins at them both before sliding a cigarette from his pack. “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he says when she and Sandor both point as one to the other side of the bonfire, and he is a slouch and skulk away as lights his cigarette with a hand cupped against the wind. He has the misfortune to walk by Bronn as the party’s host strides towards them from the house, however, and before her little brother has taken so much as a drag Bronn plucks it from his mouth and chucks it into the fire. If there’s one thing Sandor’s future best man cannot abide by, it is smoking; Sansa hopes Rickon will learn a thing or two from Bronn’s loss.

“All right, everyone, we’re almost ready to sing happy birthday, but first, there are two party poopers who have yet to take their shots. Sansa and Olenna, the two old ladies of the night, please come up and drink your tequila.” Sure enough, pinched between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, which he has lifted into the air, are two full shot glasses. Sansa groans as the rest of the crowd laughs.

“You already took your shot?” she says, sitting up and looking back to Sandor, and he grins with a nod.

“Two of them. Time to pay your dues, little lady,” he says, laughing when she rolls her eyes and chucks her sangria to the dirt under the truck. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you get too handsy if you fall into your cups.”

“You wish,” she says, and she slides off the tailgate and heads over to receive her sentence.

“I’m your grandmother-in-law, for God’s sake, I shouldn’t have to take a shot of well liquor,” Olenna says with a snap as she peels herself from Barristan’s side to stalk on sturdry legs to her granddaughter’s husband. For the first time in her life, Sansa finds herself on Olenna’s side, however thorny it may be.

“For you, honey, I bought only the best, so come drink your T.Q. Hot and shut up,” he says, and Olenna’s penciled in eyebrows shoot up, her face lit up from the bonfire and from something that looks an awful lot like girlish excitement.

“You found TQ Hot? Why didn’t you say so? Sansa, drink up honey, and hope he has more to give you, this stuff is liquid gold,” and there is a scatter of applause as Olenna knocks it back without a second thought. _Here goes nothing,_ Sansa thinks, following quick suit; she is not to be outdone by a septuagenarian when it comes to taking shots of tequila.

“Not bad, actually,” she says as she hands Bronn her glass, and he grins, nudges her shoulder with his own.

“Atta girl. Go back to your man now and get out of my way, I gotta make a speech. Margie! Get your ass over here and help me out,” he calls, and she walks over with her plastic cup of sangria, draining it before tossing the empty cup into the fire. “Here, woman, take a beer for the toast,” he says, pulling a can of Bud Light out of his back pocket and handing it to her. Margie cracks it open, scooting away when it fizzes over, and Bronn laughs.

He is on fire tonight, as amped up as he ever was, though considering how smooth that shot of tequila was and how long he was in the kitchen for, perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. She sits back in the space between Sandor’s knees on his truck, mouth and throat a warm little buzz and tang, and he slides his arms around her ribs just below her breasts, rests his chin on top of her head. Bronn repeatedly clacks the two empty shot glasses together in a wordless demand for silence.  She is distracted only for a moment as she watches Genna scoot over where Rickon sits against the back of the truck bed, plop herself down in his lap as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and to his credit he doesn’t look _that_ scandalized.

“Lift your bottles and cans, people, to my Margie, who turned, let’s see, Christ, she’s so old, okay, so one, two,” he says, looking at his fingers as if he is trying to keep track, “two, no wait, that’s the number of babies in her belly right now. I know, _thirty_ two on May first, which is why I needed thirty two people to take shots for her since she can’t drink tonight,” he grins, and Margie hands him back the foamed over beer, which he chucks in the fire before pulling his wife in towards him, spinning her once as if they are dancing instead of laughing like co-conspirators. 

Sansa’s jaw drops. She has half a mind to think she misunderstood because he said it so fast, but then the stunned silence of the crowd around them erupts into clapping and wolf whistles, shouts and comments of disbelief and congratulations, and Sandor laughs behind her.

“Did you know she was pregnant?” she asks, scrabbling onto her knees as she turns and faces him, and he’s still laughing but shaking his head. “Pregnant with _twins_?”

“No, I didn’t, on either count, but that explains why he’s so fucking giddy all night,” he says, and Sandor follows her as she hops off the truck and runs to Margie, who is a beam of happiness, a ray of light all her own out here.

“You have to be _kidding_ me,” Sansa says when she fights her way through the high fives and the hugs and all of the _You’re fucked now, brother, you ain’t never gonna sleep again_ comments _._ Margie shakes her head, grinning ear to ear.  “Twins? Really?” With the paint of firelight on her face and the glitter of it in her eyes it’s no wonder they say pregnant women glow.

“Nope, not kidding. I guess odds for twins go up in a woman’s early thirties,” she says, laughing when Sansa drags her in for a hug.

“How long have you known?” Brienne asks, smiling and accepting a beer from Mace, the happy grandfather to be.

“A little over a month. It’s just another reason we pushed the party back, I’ve been barfing my brains out ‘til about a week ago,” she says, and Rickon, who is standing next to them with Genna on his shoulders, says _Wicked._ Margie laughs at him, pats his smooth cheek, making him blush. “Oh, it’s wicked all right, but not as wicked as two babies will be when they’re bouncing on my bladder all day and night.”

“But you’ve been drinking sangria with me all night,” Sansa says, grinning herself though she still can’t quite believe it, but a quick think back provides her with ample evidence; a sudden crop of photo shoots on weekends when they usually meet at Hops & Vines, offers to be the DD and a few claims she’s too hung over to party with everyone else. Margie shakes her head again with a laugh. They’re in a small cluster between the house and the bonfire, the gravel a packed down crunch under their boots, under the shuffle slap of Arya’s flip flops as she steps into Sansa with an arm around her waist.

“There’s no alcohol in it, it’s just fruit juice and orange wedges. You really think I’m going to let people drink a bunch of sangria while Bronn forces shots on everyone? Officer Payne over there will be on my ass like white on rice,” she says, pointing to where Pod stands talking to Olenna, looking exhausted from his first shift after graduating from the sheriff’s academy.

“Well _I_ didn’t get a shot,” Rickon complains, hefting Genna on his skinny shoulders, wincing as she grabs two fistfuls of the skinny strip of long hair down his head.

“I took your shot for you earlier,” Sandor says, turning with a grin as Bronn sidles up to him. He looks more like a boy than ever with that wide grin on his face, and he reaches up to sling an arm over his best friend’s shoulders.

“I did it, you guys,” he says, clicking a full shot glass against Jaime’s beer when Lannister joins Brienne’s side. “I impregnated her,” he says with a happy sigh, shooting back his tequila, smacking his lips to the night sky before looking around at them all. “With my _penis,_ ” he stage whispers, just in time for Olenna to walk by and slap him upside the head.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset wooo](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/114528969413/kiss-him-back-chapter-6-feels)

July 31st, 2015

“And you’re sure this is legal?” Sandor is sitting astride a four wheeler with his elbows braced against the handles as he surveys the scene, a nearly empty beer dangling from one hand. The night air is pierced through by the six huge spotlights high overhead, all aimed for the center of the rodeo arena here at the racetrack. The monsoons have passed them by for the day but there’s still moisture in the air and the smell of earth is rich whenever the wind gusts against his face.

Bronn shrugs from his seat on his own quad, tipping his head back as he takes a swig from Jaime’s flask before handing it to Sandor, who does the same. As best man Bronn’s the one who cooked up this scheme, and while they’ve all had fun and no one seems worried, it does bear questioning considering his best friend’s attitude is cavalier even on the most serious of days.

“Hey, Pod,” Bronn shouts, a hand cupped to his mouth, and the young sheriff turns from where he, Bran and Jojen are talking off to the edge of the rain-muddied arena. “Are you going to arrest us?”

“I’m the one who unlocked the gate,” he shouts back, referencing the familial relations to Ilyn Payne who runs these grounds.  “If I arrest you guys I have to arrest myself.” He cannot help but grin himself as Bronn turns to look at him with a triumphant grin.

“So there you go, buddy. Even if it’s not legal, the sheriff in town is accomplice, and therefore nobody gives a shit,” and Sandor laughs, the whiskey a slide of warmth down his throat.

It’s as good a bachelor party as any, here in the mud and dirt and night air breezes, here where it’s the faint sound of country music from Bronn’s truck and the sound of shitkickers clanging against the metal guardrails. Here where Robb Stark is doing donuts in the mud while his youngest brother sits backwards on the pillion seat smoking a cigarette. Here where Barristan and Ned and Benjen are mud-spattered from the thighs down and laughing like they’re men half their age as they drink beers out of cans. Here where Jaime and Renly and Loras are three long legged cowboys sitting on the metal rails of the arena fence, sharing a bottle of ouzo that has already made Jaime half drunk, which is why Sandor has possession of his flask.

It is surprising to him in some ways; there are far more people partaking in this celebration than he ever thought possible, not with such a long and lonely track record. A sliver of him, a little niggling thorn of pessimism wants to say it’s for the free booze Bronn and Loras carted down, nearly clearing out Sonoita’s liquor store. It wants to say it’s because of Sansa and not him, but she’s up at the house with all of her friends and family, and when it dawns on him that he’s down here with all of his, he stops worrying about it and takes another swig from the flask.

“I’ll take a pull of that if there’s more,” Jon says as he walks up with Willas limping behind him. The firefighter and farmer have gotten along since they arrived earlier that morning; he and Ygritte are staying at the Tyrells as the rest of town fills up with wedding guests, and their conversation revolves around books when Ned isn’t there to steer it towards land management.

“You need some of this,” Loras calls, and he, Renly and Jaime hop down like tipsy frogs, their boots a suck and squelch in the mud when they land. They’re flannel shirts and levis, loosey-goosey grins even though Renly has spent the majority of the night on his iPhone barking last minute details and requests to the wedding planner up at Storm’s End vineyards where Sandor and Sansa will be getting married tomorrow afternoon.

“You go for it, but none of that crap for me,” Sandor says with a nod towards the half full bottle of ouzo. He can smell the boozy scent of licorice from here, can tell it’s entirely too sweet for his liking.  _Red hair and peaches and cream skin,_  he thinks to himself,  _a mop of black tangles and grey eyes. That’s enough sweet for me._

“But we brought this back from Greece over Christmas, it’s cream of the crop,” Loras insists, nodding with encouragement when Jon takes the bottle, gives it a tentative sniff before shrugging and slugging it back. His eyebrows shoot up and he winces, but then he nods with a grunt of approval before handing it over to Willas.

“I don’t give a shit where it’s from, I don’t want to be wasted in front of my future in-laws,” Sandor says, and as if on cue Robb rides up and tosses Sandor a fresh beer. He catches it and nods his thanks.

“To be honest, being around your in-laws is when you  _deserve_  to be wasted,” Renly says with a dry little smirk, not bothering to look up from his text message, and Loras says  _Hey,_ shoves him with a shoulder.

“On that note, I’m out of here. Time for me to hang with the more civilized bunch,” Loras says, and there is a flare of jealousy Sandor feels because Loras gets to straddle the divide and see her tonight. He will have to wait until tomorrow to set eyes on her; Bronn’s couch will be his bed tonight like it was all those years ago, when Jonn Blackwater was still alive and summers lasted forever. Sandor crushes his empty beer can and tosses it in the trash bag hanging from his four wheeler’s handlebar and opens his fresh one.

 “You know what you’re getting yourself into tomorrow?” Bronn asks sometime later, rolling his eyes when Gendry and Pod change the music and something called hip hop fills the evening around them. “With Sansa I mean. The dress, I mean, you know what you’re in for? Those things can be a heart stopper,” he says before belching so long and so loud that even Bran snorts with laughter.

“No, just the uh, just the shoes. I’ve seen those,” he says, taking an extra-long swig of beer as he thinks on those damnable shoes. Wickedly pretty, too beautiful for their own good, a world of sparkle and dazzle all their own. He can still hear the noise they made on the concrete, dainty little clicks and taps, each one the sound of a promise.

“Ah,” says Benjen with an easy smile as he gazes down at his beer. Sansa’s uncle wears his right arm in a sling from a recent work accident but doesn’t seem bothered by it, not with that expression on his face. “The shoes are always nice too,” and Jon groans, says  _for Chrissakes, dad_ in the middle of his and Robb’s game of Frisbee, and there is a brief but animated conversation between Bronn, Jaime and Benjen, the former two asking the latter man several questions about dating younger women that they know better than to ask Sandor.

“Dress or no, you feeling good about tomorrow?” Ned asks once the four wheelers regain interest from the younger men and it’s just the old dogs texting wives and girlfriends and wedding planners, drinking beers and staring up at the sweep of stars in the sky.  The two of them are standing side by side with their backs against the hood of Bronn’s truck, watching Bran school the hell out of Jojen on the quads. It’s a night full of men at boys’ games, and though he’s never been a playful man Sandor still finds an odd sort of peace here, a calmness he feels even with such a potentially loaded question. A man on the night before his wedding, thinking about it and everything it entails.

“Better than I’ve felt about anything before, that’s for sure,” he says, and it’s the truth because even when he got Genna it was full of terror and the unknown, a new life that yawned open about as inviting and promising as walking into a black hole. But this time around he’s tasted life with her and Sansa now, knows what awaits him as soon as he gets to swear his vows. Sandor smiles at the thought of it. Ned claps a hand on his shoulder and smiles at him with a nod.

“Good. That’s what every father wants to hear from his future son in law. Though I suppose now is when I tell you that if you ever hurt her I’ll kill you.” Ned Stark drinks his beer, gazes out into the arena as if he did not just threaten life and limb. There’s a glance between them and both men grin.

“I’d expect nothing less,” Sandor says, and he thinks of the sun on the other side of the world, how the next time he sees it will mark the day he will marry Sansa. It is a strange and wonderful thought, fat and full like that sun, as warm and comforting as daybreak.

 

She is the slow fizz and drizzle, the pop and hum, the fireworks of happy, and she is laughing so hard there are tears in her eyes. They have all of them allowed Genna to give them makeovers and Cat is the last one to get hers. Genna sits in her lap with her tongue nipped between her teeth, paints over Cat’s eyebrows with a wand of mascara as Sansa’s mother does her best not to laugh outright in the little girl’s face.

Flutes of champagne dot every surface of the house; they stand on the floor like little glass pillars of sparkle and light, wink in the kitchen light on the countertop, are silent companions in this world of women. They are sipped from and clutched to by every person here save Margie, who is pregnant and is just now showing, who takes photos and doles out grins as if they are free. And oh, how they all of them are free.

“To be honest, Arya, I don’t know how far off the mark that look is for you,” Ygritte says, and it’s as funny coming from her as it would be from Sansa; they are both red hair and sprays and spatters of freckles. The violet and blue and hot pink are doing neither of them favors, but then again, Sansa remembers wild eyeshadow and aggressive liquid liner from her younger sister. _How my sister shines,_ she thinks between a hiccup and burp, between a giggle and the close of her eyes. _How am I so happy?_ But then she has the shape of a man, tall and broad and sweet, sweet, sweet. Sansa smiles and forgets herself for that moment, a closed-eyed thought of a peach colored dress and how she will have to rise up on her toes to kiss him at the altar.

“The only one of us who passes with this crap is Shireen,” Arya says, mid-sip and mid-selfie, and she giggles hysterically when Gendry receives it and texts back. Sansa laughs, eyes still closed, future memory still a wash over her.

“I’m the only one with this much color, that’s true,” Shireen says, and Genna instantly forgets Cat’s beauty regimen at the mention of so much art. Her cast has been off for a couple of weeks now but she has not forgotten the joy of so many signatures, of so many doodles around the numerous requests for Loras to sign his name, over and over on the hot pink cast.

“I want some too,” she declares, flinging the mascara to the floor as she scrambles off Cat’s lap to where Shireen sits with her back against the far end of the sofa. “I miss my cast, I want pitchers like these ones,” she says, and Shireen is a surprised armload of little girl when Genna plops herself down on her lap, and Myranda keeps a close call from being shattered glass when she sweeps away Shireen’s champagne glass. “I wanna tree like Sansa,” and then several things happen at once, starting with Sansa’s eyes opening and an _Oh shit_ escaping her.

“Sansa has a tree?” Cat says, turning an expression of disbelief and lipstick and incredulity and mascara to her oldest daughter. Sansa drops her head and hides her mouth and her idiotic half-drunk giggle behind a hand as Arya says _It’s so badass_ and Margie goes _It’s really nothing_ and Meera says _Wait what tree, I  never saw a tree._ There is an argument of _I don’t believe it_ and _Mom, for Chrissakes_ and _Your brothers would never._

“Mom, it’s nothing,” Sansa says,” but then Genna insists _It’s real_ and abandons Shireen to find Sansa where she sits on the floor, to climb with delicious familiarity in her arms, to draw her shirt up as she falls back laughing in embarrassment and delight and _champagne_.

“It’s my daddy,” Genna says proudly, and Sansa is a bride to be rolling on the floor like a puppy, but to hear Genna say that makes her stop, dries her laughter up like wind curls a leaf. Genna looks down at her with pride and possession, and it steals away any leftover childlike chagrin she might have felt. She’s going to be a stepmother and there’s nothing she needs hide from her mom anymore. Sansa tips her head towards her, listens as her sister debriefs Cat on the where and the why and the wonder, on the love and the pain and the beauty and all the reasons backing up the artwork.

“Mom,” she says when her mother’s expression changes, when there is softness behind the surprise. “I’m on his body, too. He did and I did it, without even knowing we were. It’s, you know, it’s us.”

“I never- huh. Rickon, I get, but the rest of you?” Cat says, and before she speaks further everyone is laughing. Arya flaunts her little Celtic fox as she blabs about Robb’s tattoo of _Winter Wolf_ as an homage to his previous captain’s ship. Then Meera giggles because Jojen and Bran got matching quills and open books, and then Shireen is laughing because she’s tattooed three Starks out of five.

“Jesus, it’s a hot mess in here,” Loras says when he pushes open the door, and amidst the giggles and laughter is Sansa’s favorite sound, the shriek of Genna’s happiness. It never feels _good,_ being robbed of a little girl’s devotion, but to see her so happily reunited with her partner in crime makes up for it. _Almost,_ Sansa thinks as she sips her champagne, watching from her recline on the floor as Loras hefts Genna in the air. _Almost._

“Little miss, you and I have a date tonight. It’s called _How to Train Your Dragon_ _2_ and getting ready for a wedding. You ready?”

“I knew I would be in Sansa’s wedding,” she says, and Loras grins down at her over Genna’s shoulder, winks with the knowledge that maybe they all did, that the stars and the heavens marched out their orders a thousand years ago, all with the whisper of _Sandor and Sansa,_ and she’s drunk just enough bubbly to think it might be true.

Genna demands to be dropped from Loras’s arms and runs around the room kissing and hugging everyone, telling them all to get ready for her wedding, and in the meantime Sansa has a crouched down hug from Loras.

“It’s gorgeous up at Storm’s End,” he says. “And Sandor is _happy,_ Sanny. He’s having a good night. It’s gonna be a great day tomorrow,” and Sansa beams, bites her lip, launches herself into Loras so hard he falls back on his ass.

“Thank you guys so much,” she says, and he laughs, runs his hand down the back of her head.

“Least we could do, honey. Don’t forget how long we’ve been around. We um,” he says, rocking back onto his feet as Sansa drags herself out of his arms, runs her fingers through her hair to pull it out of her eyes. “We’ve been around since the beginning, and while we’ve never been tight friends with him like Bronn we’ve always wanted him to be happy.” Loras tips his head towards his sister who is pouring herself another club soda in the kitchen. “She noticed it from the start, when you arrived. You really have no idea, Sansa, what you’ve done for him.” It is serious and sweet, it is tears in her eyes when she shakes her head.

“All I did was fall in love with him,” she says, and Loras laughs. _That’s all it required, honey,_ he says, and then he pulls himself to his feet after a kiss to her cheek, and then he’s gone with Genna and her overnight bag, and suddenly she feels the weight of it all.

“Oh my God,” she says, standing up after Genna and Loras leave, after her mother is soon to follow with hugs and kisses and _I love you, my girl._ “Oh my _God,_ I’m getting married tomorrow,” she says, and when she stands and makes her way to the kitchen there is a herd of friends behind her, a trail of _Sansa’s getting married_ in sing song voices, a trail of Arya and Meera and Ygritte dancing behind her chanting dirty things about wedding nights.

“Weddings are just wonderful,” Margie sighs dreamily, rattling the ice in her club soda as she gazes into her glass, and Sansa knows what’s coming when she slides her glance to the side. “But wedding nights are fucking _amazing_ ,” and she is lascivious grins and lift of eyebrows as Sansa laughs.

“And I’m sure you’ve planned to keep, you know, from happening tomorrow or on the honeymoon,” Talisa says, her hip a slant against the counter as Meera pops open another bottle of champagne. “Robb hasn’t even asked yet and I’m already trying to plan for it,” she laughs. “We can get married any month so long as it’s the first half.”

“You can totally manipulate it if you’re on the pill,” Arya says with a knowing wink. “I did that when Gendry and I eloped,” she says, taking her refilled flute of champagne when Sansa rolls her eyes. “I won’t get into details, but let me just say, it’s worth a little bit of planning,” and she laughs when everyone reminds her eloping doesn’t take much planning.

“I don’t have to bother, actually, I’m not on my, oh,” she says, and then she freezes mid-sip as she thinks back. One week, two weeks, and then _Oh my fucking God,_ and Sansa takes two steps forward and spits out her champagne into the sink.

“What the hell, it’s not bad stuff,” Jeyne says, lifting the bottle to look at the label before looking up at her. The moments tick by, slow as cold honey as the two of them regard one another. Jeyne was there for so much of her life, so many ups and downs, it’s no wonder she’s the first to understand. “ _Oh_. Oh _,_ _shit_ ,” Jeyne says.

“What? What is it?”

“I don’t know, it tastes fine to me.”

“Is happy hour over?”

“Considering it’s past nine, probably.” There is a snort of laughter but Sansa barely hears any of it as she stares numbly out the window above the sink, the only visible lights being the faraway blink and wink of Barristan Selmy’s porch.

“Sansa, Sanny, honey, look at me. Look at me,” and it’s Arya standing there, Margie behind her, and they both of them _know_ now, and their stillness and seriousness infects the rest of them. Suddenly it’s died down laughter and those glasses of half-drunk champagne, it’s the dawning realization and suddenly the whole room takes a different light. It’s gaudy and bright and it hurts Sansa’s eyes.

“I- I oh, oh my God, I missed my period. I missed it by _weeks._ But I’m on the- I’m on the pill though,” Sansa stammers out, setting down her glass to brace her temples with her flute-chilled fingers. It’s a cool touch but not enough of a jolt to shake her from her shock. Margie is a sweep past Arya, an arm around the shoulders as she whispers into Sansa’s ear. Her head swims, a little thought dipping and twisting and bobbing. A thought or something more, and the sparkling wine and finger food do a swirl in Sansa’s stomach. She grips the edge of the counter.

“I’ve got tests at my house, so let’s go take one,” Margie says matter-of-factly. “And then we’ll know immediately and you won’t be stuck in this freak out limbo.” Arya is an immediate _I’m going with you_ , and while the rest of them wants to go there is no room in Margie’s Jeep. She’s happy for it, happy for the black whip of wind in her face as she gazes out at the moon-face landscape, low rolls of earth and shallow, narrow canyons, the whistle and blur as they barrel towards Margie’s house and pregnancy tests and answers she isn’t sure she wants to hear. _Pregnant,_ she thinks, she worries, she panics. _Pregnant?_

“Where is she,” he says, hopping out of the truck’s cab, Rickon still in the driver’s seat as the designated driver assigned with driving everyone to their beds. “Jesus, what the hell is all over your face?” he asks when he strides towards the house. “You look like a clown.”

“Makeovers,” she says dismissively, turning towards Rickon. “Go take the other guys home,” Margie says as Sandor sweeps past her, as Bronn hops out of the back of the truck and walks around it. Rickon accepts the command with a _You got it,_ and the crunch of gravel fills the air as Rickon backs up and rumbles down the driveway, his month long stay a guarantee that he knows his way around by now. “Sandor, wait a minute,” and she is a grip on his forearm before he can make it into the house. He spins around, all agitation and jumped up nerves, a sour clash to the previously swimmy sort of feeling the beer was giving him.

“Wait for what? You text me she’s crying, you tell me to get my ass over here, so why are you stopping me, for fuck’s sake?” He is this close to drunk and was that close to loose, but Margie’s text of _Sansa’s crying in a bad way and we need you_ shook him up and made all the pieces fall into the wrong places.

“You don’t even know why she’s upset, Sandor,” Margie says, Bronn an instant shadow behind her, Arya a silhouette in the open doorway. “Just, would you please talk to me?” The porch light turns her blonde hair into a halo and paints her anxious expression with 60 watt brushstrokes, but he finds he has no patience, not even for an explanation.

A push of hot humid air blows by him, threat of summer rain and rampage on its heels, and he takes it as an omen to go inside and find his woman. The screen is the old familiar slap behind him when he strides into their house, and it’s an odd mixture of hot boil and cold fear when he hears Sansa crying from the inner confines of the house. Closed off. Tinny and faraway and sad. He remembers that sound, Bronn weeping in the bathroom after Jonn died.

“Sansa?” He beats his knuckles on the door, his half-drunk head resting against it, and there is no scale big enough to measure how much he hates her crying.

“No,” she sobs, voice rising like weak smoke from somewhere down below, and so he sinks into a squat, braces his hand against the frame of the door. “No, stop, don’t,” she says, and he closes his eyes.

“Come on, sunshine, don’t do that. You’re upset, let me- tell me, tell me something. I hate this, that you’re so upset.” To him she is a twist of light and wide-cheeked smiles, a spin of hair and sundress under a wide blue sky, is laughter and sugar. This sort of sorrow kills him.

“I’m , I was, I thought,” she says, all stuffy-faced snuffle he can hear through the door, and he has the sorry image of her slumped against the wall. He tries for the door knob, finds it locked, shakes his head. “No, please, don’t, I just, I can’t right now,” she says.

“You can’t what, Sansa?” His knees hurt and he feels old, helpless. _All I want is on the other side of this door,_ but then there is a sick sort of feeling when he wonders if she means she can’t marry him. He is about to ask but then her next words floor him, literally.

“I thought I was pregnant,” she says finally, through breath hitches and sighs, through the rubbing sound of either a hand or a foot against the tile floor. Sandor is so shocked he sits back on his ass, a hard whump, and he stares sightlessly at the floor between his cocked out knees. “I thought I was pregnant, and I was so scared, and then it, and then I, and then negative. Nothing.”

Sandor exhales with relief, looping his arms around his legs, gripping his left wrist with his right hand. She tells him nothing is 100% when he asks how it could have happened if she’s on the pill, tells him likely the stress and excitement of the wedding put her cycle out of whack.

“Well,” he breathes out after a few moments. “I know that was uh, well, I don’t _know_ , but I’m sure that was scary.” These are uncharted waters here and he’s never had his sea legs.

“It was terrifying,” she says with a sniff and a sigh, and there’s a dull thud, perhaps her head resting back against the wall. He imagines her small and bundled up into herself there on the floor and he frowns to think of it.

“Let me in, Sansa, or come on out. I don’t want to talk to you through a door.”

“No, I don’t want you to see me like this, I’m a mess. I’m- I’m sorry Margie called you or texted or whatever. I just, oh, I don’t know,” she says, and there is a high pitched whine before it burbles and overflows and waterfalls into a fresh bought of tears.

“It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. It was negative, so we’re okay,” he says, and he feels like an idiot when he presses his palm to the bathroom door between them. “There’s nothing to worry about, Sansa. Come on out,” and when her crying stops and the door clicks open he smiles.

“’ _It’s okay?’_ That’s your reaction?” She is much as he imagined, slumped against the wall with her knees drawn into her chest, with all manner of wet makeup ringing her eyes like a raccoon’s mask, and her expression is wild and unreadable. He is reminded of the first time he met Stranger. “You’re not- you don’t even feel _sad_ that, oh my God,” she says, and she wipes at her eyes with toilet paper, leaving streaks and smears on her cheeks.

“Well, what, why are _you_ crying? You- Jesus, Sansa, you _want_ to be pregnant? We’re not even married yet for Chrissakes,” he says, and she scoffs, rolls her eyes to look up at the ceiling before looking at him.

“I thought I was pregnant with your baby, Sandor. _Our_ baby. And then I wasn’t, and when it made me so sad I realized how badly I want that, okay? Is that so hard to understand?”

Sandor is horrified.

“A baby,” he says, sounding far away because of the way his ears are ringing. He stares at her over his knees, the grip on his wrist tightening until his fingers throb. “Really?”

“You mean you don’t ever think about having a family with me?” There is such pain in her eyes when the question positions itself between them but despite that he cannot help but laugh because it’s such a ridiculous question.

“Sansa, we _have_ a family. We _are_ a family. That’s- I don’t get why this makes you so upset.” The laughter and the words do nothing to improve the look she gives him.

“You don’t want a family with _me_ , you mean. You don’t want to have a baby with _me,_ ” she says, dragging the skirt of her sundress back over her knees, her fingers worrying its hem just as her teeth go to town on her lower lip. Sandor sighs, shaking his head. _Why is this so hard for her to understand?_

“Sansa, I don’t dare try to have a baby. I feel like I lucked out that Genna’s not like my brother. What if I have a kid that’s as big of a shit as Gregor? And besides, we’re already a family, you and Genna and me, unless, what, that’s not enough anymore?”

And that’s when the shit hits the fan.

Sansa turns towards him with a scoot and a twist on the bathroom floor, her legs folded beneath her, knees just crossing the threshold as she gives him a piece of her mind. She tells him that Gregor is dead and though she’s never met him he’s haunting _her_ now with his bullshit, that both Sandor and Genna are proof there’s more good to the Cleganes than bad. Things like _You’re an amazing father_ and _I have been sitting here thinking of you with another child, with_ our _child_ and _If only you saw what I see_ fill the house. He leans slightly back away from her when she gets on her knees and walks on them into the hallway towards him, hair a long lick of auburn over one shoulder as she wags a finger in his face.

“And don’t you _dare_ try to tell me you and Genna aren’t enough. That’s precisely why I want more, Sandor Clegane. I’m in love with you, you, you _idiot,_ and I’m in love with Genna so of course I want more. More you, more her, more us. If you haven’t figured that out then I don’t know if you ever _will,_ ” she says, and he is dropped jaw and sagged shoulders when she gets to her feet and climbs over his half bent knees. There is the sigh of hemline against his face, the faintest waft of her perfume.

“Sansa,” he says, clambering to his feet in the force of her wake and her temper. He’s never experienced the night before a wedding as the groom before, but he has a strong suspicion that it’s not supposed to go this way. He just catches her as she rounds into the living room where Bronn, Margie and Arya stand in a small circle. They turn as one towards the interruption, each of them wearing a wincing sort of expression. “Sansa, wait.”

“For what, Sandor? You to tell me you don’t want to have a family with me again?” She is hot hurt and temper, as fiery as her hair with the glare in her eyes and hands on her hips. They’ve only had a handful of fights and he’s nowhere near as experienced as Bronn when it comes to talking down his girlfriend – _Wife, in a matter of hours_ \- but he _does_ know she loves him. He knows this and so he counts on it to help him out of this hole.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sansa, I am. I’m,” he cuts himself off with a long inhale of breath, rests his hands on her shoulders as he sighs. “I’m trying, okay? I’m trying,” he repeats, and she closes her eyes when he lifts a hand and runs the pad of his thumb through the makeup under one eye, gentle but firm enough to take some of the mess with it. He repeats the move on the other side and when she finally opens her eyes, most of her fire is gone, lost in the fathomless blue.

“I know,” she whispers. Margie is _Go on, go_ and she, Arya and Bronn beat a retreat to the front yard, the screen door a small metallic slap against its frame. “Just think about it some more, would you? The whole, you know,” she trails off, and he nods. _Family,_ he thinks, bowing his head to kiss her, her face half streaked with tears and still damp from them when he cups it in his hands.

“You still gonna marry me, right?” He asks when he walks her back to Margie’s car so she can shower and calm down, so she can finish her champagne and her girl’s night before turning in. She shakes her head with a hiccupping sort of laugh.

“You really can be a dummy sometimes, can’t you,” she says, turning from the Jeep to kiss him once more. “Of course I’m marrying you. I didn’t buy those shoes for nothing, you know.”

Rickon, who will crash on the living room floor here to save himself from the gaggle of women up at the house, is outside smoking and texting his girlfriend by the time Margie comes back. Bronn and Sandor are drinking beers in the living room with an old Brooks and Dunn album playing mid-volume. If he thought he’d be getting another one of her lectures he’s mistaken, because after she drops her purse on an old rocking chair by the front door she walks over to him and kisses him on the forehead.

“Well damn, Margie,” he says, and she’s a smile and sigh when she straightens and looks down at him.

“I’ll be right back. I have a wedding gift but it’s mostly for you, and I figure now is the time to give it to you,” and after she disappears down the hall and returns, he has a large rectangular present in his hands. He’s been her friend long enough, knows the weight and feel of such a gift to know it’s a framed photograph.

When he unwraps it and sees the snapshot in full, he knows it’s him even though it’s just a silhouette, a shadow of a man walking the length of Bronn’s barn, the lazy wave of a lead rope dangling from one hand. It’s not black and white but nearly so because of the contrast of dazzling sunlight in the foreground and the black shadow and shade inside the barn.

“That’s the first picture I ever took of you,” she says from above his shoulder, and he knows she’s looking down at it with him. “Back when I was in high school. You were so, well, you were so _sad,_ Sandor. So alone, attached to nothing and nobody. I wanted to give this to you for your wedding to remind you that those days are over. They’ve been over a long time, ever since Genna and Sansa came waltzing in,” she says, and he cannot help but chuckle.

“Crashed, more like it,” he says, thinking of shooting stars.

“Still, tomorrow it will _really_ mean it. There’s really nothing holding you back, honey. If you still think of all that crap in the past then cut it off and let your life regrow into a different shape. You know, like a—”

“A tree, I get it. Thanks, Margie,” he says after a few moments, and then he sighs and stands, hugging her with one arm as he holds the picture and gazes down at it. Regrowth and nurturing, pruning and weeding and cultivating. These are words he knows in one area of his life, these are words he knows now he can use in the others.

“You want another beer before we turn in?” Bronn asks, halfway to the kitchen by the time Sandor carefully sets the frame on the coffee table. He rakes his fingers through his hair, pulling it out of the hair tie he stole from Sansa.

“Yeah, but first, Margie, will you do me a favor? Not that a wedding gift isn’t plenty, but there’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now.”

“If you want another tattoo talk to that kid’s girlfriend, not me,” she says with a laugh, and he chuckles and shakes his head, cracks open the beer Bronn tosses him from the door. Rickon is the smell of cigarettes and the tapping of his thumbs on his phone when he walks in.

“I could do it too, if you want to trust me, I’ve gotten real good,” he says when he finally looks up at all of them, who are all staring at him with varying degrees of incredulity. Rickon shrugs and looks back at his phone and drifts back outside.

“No, not that. Margie,” he says, turning towards her, and she is all serenity and peace even close to midnight. Sandor takes a deep breath, and Margie is a smile and a nod when next he speaks. “I want you to cut my hair. I don’t need it, anymore.”


	7. Wedding - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/116512940353/kiss-him-back-chapter-7-feels)

August 1, 2015

 

It’s too warm to brew coffee, too early to wake this house of sleeping women with the aroma of French roast wafting through its rooms, so Sansa quietly pours herself a glass of tea, dropping in the ice one cubes one at a time. Lady is the click of nails on concrete as she circles Sansa and the kitchen island, and it’s impossible not to smile at her attention.

“We’re getting married today, honey puppy, if you can believe it,” she murmurs, leaning over to scratch behind a fluffy ear, and Lady is all dog grin and lolling tongue, a blinking-eyed happy pup.

A squeeze of lemon later and she’s sitting with her knees to her chest on the bench out front, the early morning breeze a lick against her bare legs as Lady sniffs and trots and casts jovial panting smiles her way. Sansa would shiver if it weren’t for the long sleeved shirt of Sandor’s she’s in, so instead she rests her chin on her kneecaps and gazes at the sun and the fat flock of clouds that drift and gust and scud. It’s his world here in this little space of early morning and the orange cream sunlight streaming down, his world of blonde grass and blue sky and green scrub brush, and for a moment she feels like an outsider.

“Come on, Lady,” she says with a low whistle, sliding her feet back into her slippers and picking up her tea to walk around the house and down the hill. It is her wedding day, and while it’s an easy thing to think of the future and all the things it holds for them, she cannot help herself when it comes to the memories. Genna running down the hill playing ghost chase; Sansa chasing her on this same path she’s navigating now while Lady lopes in a zigzag ahead of her. Sandor running down the hill thinking his daughter was hurt, only to find Sansa sitting in the wash with bloody knees and a twisted ankle; the way he crouched down beside her to inspect her knees and fuss over her in his gruff way, despite his own injuries. And then she’s smiling, lip between her teeth when she thinks of being in his arms for the first time as he carried her up the hill to the house. How she ached for him then. How she aches for him still.

“Be good, girl, I’ll be right back,” she says at the bottom of the hill as Lady gambols about, and she unlatches the door to the greenhouse, taking a fortifying swallow of ice-cold tea before stepping into the humidity and the smell of soil. She lets the door close behind her, and it’s like being swallowed whole, and she thinks  _Now_ this _is his world, and he invited me into it from nearly the very start._ The seedlings and shrubs and saplings are tender-leafed and spry, springy to the touch when she walks down the aisle on the right, a tickle of green on her open, downturned palm as she sweeps a touch above them. Sansa sighs when she stops and turns in place, a slow pirouette that lets her gaze soak it all in. She remembers.  _And what am I now? Now you’re just being a bully,_  and then she grins.

“And soon you’re going to be my husband,” she says to the plants and the blossoms and the roots and the dirt, crossing the narrow cinder block path to the table where he fully undressed her the first time, where she can always find him working and planting and pruning and watering. She sets her glass on the corner of it and turns, hoisting herself up onto its edge, swings her legs to and fro. It is like perching inside his heart, here, and it makes her think of the little bird on his ribs, inked forever on its own branch.  _I am no outsider,_  she thinks with a smile and a dip of her head.  _I’ve been here since the very beginning,_  and she wonders if it’s been since she was born, this entire destiny and fate of hers.

 _I don’t dare have a baby_ fills her mind though, and she can’t keep the frown from creeping in, because after everything, after all the love they have, he still has these  _stupid_  worries. Her hand drifts from the table to her stomach, a ghosting touch that fills her up with want as much as the idea fills him with doubt.

“Whoa, it’s hotter than hell in here, and we’re already in Arizona,” Arya says when she steps inside, making Sansa jump so violently the table shakes and the ice cubes in her tea rattle against each other.

“Dammit, you scared the crap out of me,” she says with a laugh and a shake of her head as she looks at her sister. They’re as close to identical as they’ll ever be, both of them in shorts and men’s shirts with sweating glasses of iced tea. Arya seems as reluctant to leave Gendry behind as Sansa is with Sandor, and so here they are, two little thieves in oversized clothes. _And soon we’ll_ both _have husbands_. “How’d you know I was in here?” She lifts her hand from her belly and cups it around the edge of the table, but Arya’s as clever as the animal tattooed on her foot, and it does not escape her.

“I was already up and in the kitchen when I saw you walk down the hill,” she says, her eyes a flick down and up as she walks further inside. “Don’t tell me you’re sitting here freaking out about last night, San.”

“No, not at- well, not freaking out, just thinking about stuff. How it was just so easy for him to dismiss,” she says, watching her sister with a half-smile. Sandor showed Rickon and Arya the greenhouse when they first came a month ago but they neither have green thumbs or much passion for horticulture, so this is only the second time her sister has stepped foot in here. She looks around with more interest this time, though, completing a circuit before coming to hop up beside Sansa on the table, tucking one foot under her thigh before drinking thirstily from her tea.

“The way I look at it,” her sister says after a few moments of plant-growing silence, “is he’s been on his own awhile. Gendry and me, we’ve been together since I was in high school. Like, you get used to the idea of other people making decisions with you when that’s basically how it’s always been, you know? And Sandor, he’s  _just_  now found someone. Hell, San, you’re the one who told me he hasn’t even had a  _girlfriend_ before, and he’s closing in on forty. So, you know, he’s used to making decisions and choices or whatever, and like, sticking to them. They were lines in the sand and there was nobody around to ever cross them, until now.”

Sansa chews on her lip throughout this, watching her feet swing back and forth until first one slipper and then the other falls to the cinderblocks and gravel below. She smiles when she thinks of  _Call me uncle, Genna_ and  _Yeah, well, she_ is  _my kid._ She thinks of his flare of temper and the way he laughed at her when Genna threw her food to the ground. She thinks of how he kissed her that night in the kitchen, how he came back to her when she got over her hesitation and confusion. She thinks of how he claimed her as his under the cloudy sky of an early summer storm, how thoroughly and devotedly he loved her right here in this greenhouse. And when she lifts her left hand and gazes at it, she thinks how he slid that ring over her finger, how he asked and she answered, how he smiled and how he laughed.

“I just have to give him time,” she says as the memories fall around her like the snowfall did that one fantastical morning last winter.

“That’s about it,” Arya says with a nod and a shake of the ice in her glass. “He’ll get there, San Fran, just let the guy think about it and realize it’s something he gets to have now, if he wants it.”

And suddenly it doesn’t matter, however long that might take. He waited his entire life for her; the least she can do is give him time to wrap his head around a life he never before expected. It doesn’t matter either, if he never quite gets there, because as she bobs afloat on all of these memories, as the sweat from the greenhouse humidity slips down the nape of her neck, she knows she will have no one else but him, whatever that means, whatever that entails.

Sansa smiles when she slides down off of the work table and back into her slippers, her palm a lingering drift on the roughhewn grains of wood, their bumps and ridges as unique as any fingerprint, as any love story. She takes one last look around as Arya hops down to her feet as well, flip flops two slaps on the cinder, and she thinks of all the things they will grow together after today, all the things that have already taken root simply because they met one another.

“Come on,” she says with a fortified, happy sigh as she links arms with her sister and tugs her to the door. “Let’s go get ready. Willas is coming with Margie to help with photos, and I want to at least be in my slip before he shows up.”

“He’s the hot guy with the limp, right? He has a girlfriend, I wonder?” Arya says as they head up to the house, the sun a spangle above them, making both women squint as they finish their tea.

“Yes he is and no he doesn’t,” Sansa says, grinning with a backward glance to her sister as she pushes open the sliding glass door, Lady a silken brush against her calf as the dog darts in first. There’s the sleepy rise and fall of Myranda and Jeyne talking in the kitchen, and Sansa shoots the latter a sly look. “At least, not  _yet._ ”

 

He was up before the rest of the household even so much as yawned, and he took Stranger out for an early morning ride to clear his thoughts and his heart and whatever else lies between. _Nerves_ , he thought at first, when he let the horse take the bit and he drove his heels into Stranger’s sides, when they streaked across Bronn’s back field towards the Mustang Mountains. They both huffed hot breath in the early morning air as they stood in front of a small ravine, the horse nosing the grass while Sandor stared at the sky.  _Not nerves. Excitement._ Because it’s not that he wants to get the wedding over with. He just wants to be married to Sansa.

When they finally turn back the birds are out in aggravating full, swooping and chirping their warnings over late summer nests and the indignation that comes from being disturbed. He’s got about the same greeting waiting for him at the house when Rickon staggers out of the front door for his first cigarette with a grumpy, sleepy teenager look on his face. Sandor guides Stranger with a touch of the reins to the horse’s neck, and Rickon is a  _Holy shit_  when they amble up the driveway passing him by on the way to the barn.

“You’ve seen Stranger before,” he says, but then Rickon shakes his head with a grin, sucking in a lungful of smoke before exhaling it.

“I’ve seen that horse but not the hair. I guess I went to bed before all that went down,” he says, miming the cut of a pair of scissors, laughing when Sandor subconsciously runs his hand through it. It’s still long enough to tie back but right now it’s a loose graze against his jaw and he still can’t quite get over it himself, how light he feels.

“Yeah well, everyone spruces up for a wedding,” he grunts, turning the horse away and his back to Rickon’s laughter, to the already familiar  _taptap_  texting from which the youngest Stark can’t seem to help himself. 

“Anyways, so I thought of that wedding thing they do, where you give shit that rhymes or whatever,” Rickon says a few minutes later when Sandor is brushing down Stranger. He grunts in question, glancing over his shoulder with loose hair in his eyes.

“A poem or something?” Stranger butts the side of his head with a velvet soft nose, a whuffle and exhale in his ear, and he rolls his eyes and butts him right back with his forehead to the black chin beside him. There is the soft filter of dust settling in the early morning light streaming through the eastern side of the barn, and Rickon looks almost impish in the haze of it. He shrugs.

“Yeah, that borrowed, blue crap, I don’t know.”

“That doesn’t rhyme, buddy,” Sandor says, tossing the curry comb in its bin before leading Stranger into his stall. There’s the warm  _clop_  of his shod hooves on hay, an echo of the beat of his heart in his chest. The ride calmed him but now this talk is winding him up again.

“Okay, smartass, some parts of it rhyme, I don’t fucking know. But there’s definitely something borrowed, so here,” he says, and when Sandor turns around after securing the stable door, he sees a hot pink lighter resting in Rickon’s outstretched palm.

“This isn’t blue,” he says, unable to keep back the grin when they walk back to the house, and Rickon rolls his eyes.  _He looks like his sister when she scolds Genna – or me,_  Sandor thinks, and now he’s chuckling with a nervous swipe against the back of his neck.  _Only a matter of hours, now_.

“It’s Shireen’s, okay, so it’s like double borrowed or something. Double the luck, and you’re  _welcome,_ brother,” he says as Sandor opens the screen door to let him in. During his ride the house must have woken up fully, because there’s easy banter and the sizzle and smell of bacon coming from the kitchen.

“Brothers,” Margie’s voice wafts in on the smell of breakfast. “How sweet!”  _Brothers,_ he thinks,  _and a sister to boot._  So much falling into his lap, and all because Sansa said yes.  _Family,_  he thinks, and it’s a cold slide of shivers down his spine, it’s an itch in his fingers and a bittersweet ache in his heart.

“Try giving him a something borrowed and  _then_  tell me how sweet it is,” Rickon says, grinning at Sandor as he walks backwards down the hall to the kitchen, eyebrows raising. “Not even a thank you from this guy.”

“Thank you, you little shit,” Sandor says, rolling his eyes as he pockets the lighter, liking the weight of it when it falls into place. His second wedding gift, however borrowed it might be.

Bronn is sitting at the rickety round table in the kitchen with his feet up on the edge of it, his cup of coffee resting on his chest, and Margie is in her signature sleepwear, an old t-shirt of Bronn’s and a tousle of blonde hair. Sandor glances down, wondering if he sees a belly on her yet, wondering what that’s even like. She’s the first person close to him to ever be pregnant. When she glances at him he clears his throat and looks away, pulls up a chair to the table as Rickon sits on the counter.

“A something borrowed, huh,” Margie says, forking the bacon and flipping it before turning to look at Sandor. “I think that’s awesome. It shouldn’t just be the bride who gets that fun. What did you get so far?”

It’s a flurry of conversation as he eats his breakfast, Rickon and Margie chattering like hens while Bronn shrugs over what Sandor needs to complete the list, and he learns that it’s something borrowed, something blue, something old and something new. He’s shoveling eggs in his mouth, embarrassed as Margie drifts through the house on a honey hunt for things to give him, like a bird searching for twigs and dander for a nest.

“Just cut it out, you guys,” he says irritably and awkwardly after he showers and is half dressed, when Rickon finds a blue parking ticket of Bronn’s under a magnet on the fridge. “Look, I appreciate it, but this is crazy. I’ve got the lighter, see?” He pulls the hot pink Bic out of his slacks pocket to try and prove his point, but then he’s getting dressed in a living room full of three busy bodies who are all grinning at him. It’s not reason they’re listening to, but then it’s not reason he’s listening to either, not when he thinks of wedding vows, not when Bronn extends his hand with two cufflinks in his hand.

“They’re my dad’s, Sandor. They’re pretty old. I think you should wear them today, and I think you should keep them,” and Margie and Rickon are two steps out of the room when the argument erupts.

There’s a lot of  _No fucking way, they’re Jonn’s so they’re yours_  and  _Fuck you, I have everything of my dad’s here, it’s the least you can do, you prick._  And finally he’s standing in the center of the room, toe to toe with Bronn as they both look down at the little horseshoe cufflinks, tiny and pure silver and only a little tarnished inside the curves of them. They look ridiculously small when Bronn tips his hand over Sandor’s outstretched palm and they fall with a chinkle into his waiting hand.

“Seriously, I can’t,” he says. It’s a short cross of the room when he pulls his plastic-covered dress shirt off of the window’s frame and shows Bronn. “I don’t, I mean I’ve never even owned a shirt that needed cuff links, buddy. These just have buttons.” Bronn shrugs, and if on cue Margie sweeps in, wearing a bathrobe and carrying a spool of thread and a pair of scissors.

“I can fix that,” she says, and then he finds himself sitting next to Rickon on the couch as he watches his friend doctor his shirt, all so he can wear something that Bronn’s dad likely wore only once or twice.  _He should’ve worn them at his funeral_ , he thinks, but then he bows his head, because he realizes how badly he wants those links to be his.

“There,” Margie says as she straightens his tie two hours later, standing back to regard her fine work. There are two cuts in the cuffs of his shirtsleeves and he’s got silver horseshoes there,  _For luck,_ she tells him, and now she’s smiling that watery mother smile she’s gotten ever since they announced her pregnancy. “You look handsome, Sandor. Really. Are you sure you still want to tie your hair back though?”

“One thing at a time, I guess,” he says.

 

It’s a rich feeling, stepping out of her parents’ rental car after they park at Storm’s End, because there’s the glitter of her shoes before she stands up and smoothes her dress. There’s the sway and gauzy swish of skirts against her legs, the delicious weight of what is her wedding dress.  She steps away from the car as Arya shuts the door behind her, gives a warning glance to the sky, telling it to mind its own business. It’s a gamble, getting married in Arizona during monsoon season, but the sky is less ominous than it is full, with those clouds and the streamers of sunlight spraying out from behind them.  _Good,_  she thinks with a smile and a nod.  _Good._

“No, no, I said those flowers go  _there,_ ” Renly says as he strides out from the front door, two wedding planners hot on his heels as one scurries left and the other dashes right. “And find the DJ, her name is Emily and I’m trusting only her to make sure the processional goes right,” he says, but then the businessman slides off and the friend is there when he outstretches his arms with a grin. He’s impeccable and unflappable, perfect in his black suit, looking like an appetizer to the entire event about to unfold. “Welcome to your wedding, sweetie,” he says, embracing Sansa before he hugs Cat and shakes Ned’s hand. “Come on in and grab some champagne. It’s been chilling for about a month, so it should it taste pretty good by now.”

Her bridesmaids drift in like faeries from the ether once she’s ensconced in one of Renly and Loras’s spare bedrooms, filled with flowers though she’ll only be here an hour, and she stands to greet them all. They are in mismatched dresses the color of earliest dawn to stand out against her peach dress, and all shapes and sizes of them look like blooms of white tulips or irises, plucky, jaunty flowers that laugh and giggle and admire one another. Her sister is there as well to help Sansa with the final touches of her makeup as Margie offers tips and advice over her shoulder.

“Oh my God, there he is,” Myranda says as she leans into the window, everyone else following suit, even her mother. Though she’s trying to maintain dignity here, here in her dress and her coiffed hair and her head full of  _wedding_ like so much dandelion fluff, Sansa leaps up. “He is  _sexy._ ”

“Who,” she breathes, and when everyone in the room laughs she already knows, rushes to the window like a school girl, only to see Willas limping to one of the first rows of white chairs set  up outside. “Oh for Pete’s sake,” she sighs, laughing with a hand to her stomach when both Myranda and Jeyne grin at each other.

“The groom’s taken, sweetie, we’re not going to fawn over  _him_ ,” Jeyne says as Arya and Margie drift away from the window.

“Speak for yourself, because there he is, and he’s pretty damned hot himself,” Myranda says, stabbing the window pane with a forefinger, and Sansa shoots her a look before glancing outside and gasping.

“Oh, my God,” she says, hand to her heart, the silk and lace a soft sweet tickle on her palm, because there he is.

 

People are filtering in like light through cut crystal, little sparks and shades of cocktail dresses and muted suit jackets and he thinks that’s all he can see. Shadows and light, love and darkness, all of them perfect. His heart is in his mouth like it has lived there its entire life, and his pulse hammers like it’s something firmer than blood coursing through his veins. He thinks of words like promise and truth and love and  _Yes,_ and he puts his hands in his pockets, clasps the tokens he’s been given, feels the pull of those cufflinks when they catch on the hem of his pants pockets.

There’s a sea of people now, the backs of their heads bobbing and doing the to and fro of an ocean he’s only seen once, and when he looks up to the sky there’s a tug on his arm.

“Hey,” Robb says, and when Sandor turns the eldest Stark sibling is gazing out towards the gathering crowd, and there are no words to express his gratitude for this act of casual indifference, this nonchalance of Robb’s that steals away some of his nerves.

“Hey,” Sandor says, pulling his hands from his pockets. It’s a fine day, a lovely day, one with the sun up and the grasses almost,  _almost_ green. He thinks maybe if he focuses on that, he’ll be just fine.

“So, when you asked Sansa,” he says, and when Sandor shifts his gaze Robb is looking at the ground. “Did you, you know, do something special or just ask her? You know, point blank, or, you know,” he says with a vague gesture, trailing off when soft acoustic music starts.

“I can’t even remember at this point,” Sandor says, glancing to the DJ, a woman named Emily in a plum colored dress who nods once in his direction. She is all business, something he can appreciate in this hot hour, this shivering moment.

“That’s your cue, man. I’ll ask you later,” Rob says with a clap to his shoulder, and then he fades to nothing, to the background of everything, of life and love and the stop and start of it all.

Sandor slips his hands in his pockets once more, closes his eyes, opens them, knowing Bronn is right behind him, and in his wake, Sansa’s brothers. He clears his throat, bows his head a moment, and then there is the sweet peal of  _Daddy I seeee you_  from inside Renly and Loras’s house, and he’s got the strength to lift his chin and smile, nod briefly to the people around him, because it means Genna’s waiting and Sansa is waiting, and so Sandor walks down the aisle.

 

The warm air hums here, alive with a zephyr that never seems to disappear, with the swoop of birds from the trees overhead, the rustle of floral arrangements that pepper this high desert oasis of a backyard. Catelyn can see the rows upon rows of lush vineyard beyond the arch under which Sandor stands, a stoic brick of a man next to the slighter frames of Bronn and her sons.

He’s far less intense today in his light grey suit, far less weighted down with his hair cut; it’s hard to tell unless he turns to the side, murmuring in quiet undertones to Bronn. It’s a tethered horse set free, and his shoulders seem looser for it and yet somehow all the broader.  _Those shoulders will carry the weight of the world for my daughter,_  she thinks with a smile.  _Heaven knows he’s strong enough for it,_ and to keep herself from shedding tears she gazes around the backyard. It’s a hair’s breadth away from some fancy resort courtyard, it is so sprawling and magnificent, shaded here and there with a burbling fountain in the middle, around which Sansa and her bridesmaids will walk before heading down the aisle.

“I feel like I’m on some movie set,” Talisa whispers to Shireen, both girls seated to her left, and Cat stifles a laugh because she has to agree. Mr. Baratheon has outdone himself.

“Or like everything is made out of spun sugar. I want to take a bite out of those flowers,” Meera says, making Benjen who is seated between them chuckle.

“You’ll make the evil witch come and try to take a bite out of  _you,_ ” he murmurs, and Cat does her best to ignore the inevitable innuendos they’re bound to fall into. She diverts her attention.

Roses are  _everywhere,_  lavender and peach, white and blush pink, the riotous orange that makes her think of the one time she and Ned went to Hawaii. They are in summer-swollen swags above the three sets of French doors leading into the house; they hang in heavy, bee-buzz drapes along the arch above the groom, and spray out from lush posies on the backs of every chair along the aisle. What color is leeched from the pale grasses of Sonoita seems to have found its way here in the vehicle of these roses, which Cat has learned come from Margie’s own garden at her house. Aside from the flowers and natural beauty of the surrounding vineyards and architecture there is little other décor, not that it needs it. It’s a perfect summer’s day, blue skies and a fat-butter sun up above them, the shift and sift of breezes through the oak and ash, the soft buzzing of excited conversation around her as they wait for the bridesmaids to start the show.

“There, it’s starting now,” Ygritte says from the row behind them and Jon whispers his assent, and in unison the entire row of people of which Cat is a part turns their heads. It’s a vision.

Myranda is the first to step around the fountain and head down the aisle, her hips a sway to match the tree branches above, her signature saucy smile replaced with one of sweet nervousness for once, and Cat nods and smiles encouragingly when she glances her way. Next is Margie, her belly the faintest swell in her pale empire-waisted dress, and she looks like the picture of budding motherhood, though that new-mother-beam of a smile is no less clever when she glances over at her brother, the impeccably mannered one named Willas. She’s spent enough time around Margaery to know that something romantic must be afoot, and Catelyn smiles, because what are weddings for, if not love, love, love.

 _That just leaves Jeyne and Arya, then Genna, and then my daughter,_  Cat says, ignoring propriety to twist in her seat, her knees bumping into Benjen’s thigh as she cranes her next to look back, to await with bated breath the sight of her first child to get married. She gazes back once to see Sandor’s face, to gauge his reaction to the official start of his wedding day. His stillness is exacerbated by the fidget Bronn wears at his side, and Cat just catches him elbowing the groom. And there it is, the boyish grin, the glance down to his best man; there it is, the giddy joy, the infectious delight that can strip away the seriousness of even the most stoic of men.

 

When Jeyne pushes open the French doors farthest from the wedding, steps out into summer with a final glance and smile to Sansa over her shoulder before heading to the left where the aisle awaits, Arya’s got Genna in her arms to keep her from another attempt to bolt out of the room at the far end of his backyard.  There is a sea of flagstone between her and Sandor, a long stretch of it under the dappling shade of overhead tree boughs, and Sansa steps forward to watch her friend through the wooden blinds as she walks around the fountain and down the aisle. Her heart is in her throat and she thinks of hummingbirds and shivery things, flowers in the breeze, blowing out candles, his fingers down her naked spine. Her exhale is a tremble and both her father and sister look at her with brown sugar smiles.

“I’m okay, I’m okay. I’m just excited, is all,” Sansa says with a laugh that’s half a tick higher than it normally is. She has watched her friends slip out of the house one by one, and now she’s watching her sister do the same, and she thinks she will break apart into a thousand dragonflies if she has to wait much longer.

“All right, Genner, you’re going to be good right? Because it’s my time to walk now,” Arya says as she lets Genna slide down to her feet, her flower girl dress puffed out like merengue, black hair a bounce of ringlets as she bounds like a puppy around Arya’s feet. Her sister looks up at her and smiles. “You got this, sister, okay?”

“I got this,” Sansa repeats with a nod, and Arya steps in close for a brief hug, to tuck a straying lock of auburn behind her ear before grinning and saluting down to Genna, who takes it seriously and salutes back with a firm little lift of her chin that makes Ned laugh.

“Jesus, it’s a gorgeous day,” Arya says as she steps outside, and before she heads down to the aisle she spins on the heel of her stiletto. “A perfect day to get hitched,” she says, grinning. “Now count to ten and then come follow me,” the younger Stark sister says to Genna before turning and sauntering across the back patio.  _Count to ten, count to ten, count to ten._

Ten seconds go by in simultaneous slow agony and brushfire speed, and before she knows it she is alone with her father, can hear Genna say hello to everyone as she tosses petals down the aisle, can hear the thrum and rush of her pulse as it pounds in her ears. Her father clears his throat and stands in the open doorway when the music fades and the ukulele strum begins her favorite version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Sansa sucks in a gasp, her free hand flying to her chest, her other hand a tightened vise on the bouquet of lavender colored roses.

_It’s time._

“Well, I guess that’s our cue, care bear,” her father says, his hand outstretched for hers, and it’s a like lifeline to help rescue the wild creature she’s become, all stopped heartbeats and wide eyes, a bundle of nerves and anticipation and that rich excitement she gets when starting a new book, the same feeling she gets when she finishes one. Because it’s all start and finish today in one move, in one single walk on her father’s arm, the farewell to the life she knew and the hello to the life she’ll start living the moment her  _I do_  meets his.

“Okay,” Sansa says, stuck somewhere in that happy limbo where both laughter and tears seem to rise from the same well of happiness. “Okay, time to get married,” she says, coming to her father’s side, her right hand a warm tuck into the crook of his elbow.

“I know I told you this a thousand times today, but you make a beautiful bride, Sansa. The sun is going to run away out of sheer embarrassment, you shine that much brighter,” her father says with a smile, and when she says  _Thank you_ her chin trembles, just once, with the threat of those tears. But when he leads her from the guest house, turning so they can see the guests and the aisle and the flowers, so she can see the man who wants to call himself her husband, she exhales  _everything._  The nerves and the tears, the giddy hysterical laughter, all of it washes away because he’s there, and even from this distance she can see he’s smiling.

 _He’s waiting for me,_  she thinks, breathing out a laugh of wonder as she walks towards him.  It’s all magic. The breezes are kisses from faeries, the sunlight on her shoulders is a drape of love. Even the humidity that swells and fills the air is a sort of token of luck today. Sansa bites her lip as she smiles at him, and she’d like to look at the guests who have taken the time to celebrate with them but it’s impossible, looking away from him, not when he’s got one of the most open smiles on his face that she’s ever seen. He’s so evidently happy, as dazzling as the sky itself in the crisp grey suit that matches his eyes, and how  _bright_  they are, when she finally stops before him.

“Who stands here today, with their family’s blessings for this couple’s marriage?” the reverend asks, his weathered cowboy’s face creased into a benign smile. Her father pauses a fraction of a moment before speaking.

“I do,” Ned says, kissing Sansa’s cheek before gently moving her hand from his elbow, placing it into Sandor’s open and waiting palm.  _Home at last,_  she thinks as she looks up at him, her gaze a flicker across his face. His eyes are the grey after a winter storm, his scars are a wrinkle as he smiles, and he looks like a boy when a lock of his hair slips out of its tie and into his eyes, and that’s when she realizes, and that’s when Sansa gasps.


	8. The Wedding - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/116533940193/kiss-him-back-chapter-8-feels)
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> [PIcset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/116532298823/kiss-him-back-chapter-8-feels-willas-x-jeyne)
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> [MUSIC PLAYLIST FOR THE WEDDING, ALL THANKS TO BALLROOM PINK, who gets an OC cameo in our story. XOXOXO ballroompink, thank you so much for your hard work!](http://8tracks.com/ballroompink/the-best-is-yet-to-come)  
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“Your hair,” she murmurs, and he’s got a stab of panic in his chest until she smiles, radiant as ever, and without a second thought she reaches up and back, her fingers digging in and dragging away the tie, letting it fall loose, and as she wiggles her hand until his hair tie rests like a bracelet around her wrist, she laughs like a girl.  _My girl,_  he thinks, smiling again at her look of wonder. "I love it."

“Happy wedding,” he says hoarsely, and though it’s a hold up to the ceremony and they’re standing in front of God knows how many people, though he can hear Bronn’s suppressed chuckle as the music plays on, he doesn’t care. It’s their day. It’s his day, and he’ll take as much time as he wants with her here in this moment they’ve managed to make private, even with an audience in the midst of all these flowers and dewy-eyed gazes.

She’s as stunning as he knew and was half dreading she’d be, thinking maybe it would knock him on his ass right here in Renly’s backyard under the sun and sky and in front of all these people. Her dress is like mist rolling off a hillside, the color a peach fuzz warmth that makes him think of sunshine and spring, makes him glance down to see if he can catch a sight of those shoes of hers. He sees her bouquet instead, and he reaches out the hand that’s not clasped in hers to drag a finger along the scalloped edge of a rose petal.

“You look like a teenager, even with that beard of yours,” she whispers, making him look back up at her as she runs her fingers through his hair before tucking it behind his ear. Everything around them falls away save for her, rainwater runoff down a sandy wash, as if the only people in the world are right here, hand in hand, gaze to gaze.

 “I  _feel_  like a teenager, but I think that’s more because of you than the haircut,” he grins, and she laughs again, nods, snaps into herself. There is a rolling chuckle amongst their guests, and he’s too captivated to even look their way, but the good humor resides in him as well, and he grins all the broader for it.

“Y’all ready?” the reverend asks, leaning in with an amused, twinkling sort of look to the both of them, and she’s a blush and a nod, the tiniest clearing of her throat. And then they’re getting married.

There are words about love and devotion, loyalty and adoration, proclamations of joining families and hearts and lives, but he only half hears them, trapped as he is in her gaze. She’s all wide blue eyes and a smile that can’t quite leave her mouth, the loose capture of her hair at the nape of her neck where it’s so casually bundled and coiled. She’s the Sansa he sees everyday but also something more, a version of herself he may only see today. That dress of hers is an ethereal thing that makes him think of goddesses eating grapes from the fingers of some lucky worshiper. And he realizes that the lucky fool is him, and then he realizes that it is his turn to speak.

He vows to take her as his lawful wife, to have her and hold her for better or worse and in sickness and health until death do they part, but it’s not enough all of a sudden, because there’s words he means to say to her, there is something he needs to tell her here, with their friends and family around them, here where it’s a  _vow_  and not just a tangle of words.

“I take you as my wife and the mother of my children, however many we have,” he says, because he wants Genna in this promise but he wants Sansa to  _understand_  him, to know that the road doesn’t stop there, that it can go as far and as long as she wants it. Because they are a family no matter the size, no matter the past.

Sansa’s jaw drops before she remembers herself, and he gives her a small smile and a nod when she mouths  _Do you mean_ before trailing off _,_  because yes, that’s precisely what he means.  _Oh, Sandor,_ she whispers so quietly he can hardly hear it, his name as light and fleeting as a mirage.

Sandor watches her face as she swears to take him as her husband, to have him and hold him for better or worse and in sickness and health, to love and cherish him and Genna until death do they part. He has never fainted or even come close but he’s got a good idea of what lightheadedness feels like, standing here in front of Sansa, hearing her speak those words, hearing her swear her love.

“A  _family_ , until death do we part and even after,” she says, shaking back a forward fall of her hair, one he brushes back once she slides the ring onto his finger and he’s got hers safely in place.

“You may now kiss the bride,” the reverend says, his voice as pleased as apple pie. He’s deeply happy to hear those words, nearly as much as he loved the sound of her swearing herself to him, and he closes the space between them with a single step.

“Oh God, I thought he’d never say it,” Sansa breathes with a laugh, one he tastes when he cups her face in his hands and kisses her, bowing his head only just so seeing how tall she is in her wedding shoes. Her arms wind around his neck as applause erupts all around them, as one or two people wolf whistle. When he’s got his arms around her waist he lifts her up, has the happy press of her weight against his chest when he arches back, that gust of laughter against his beard when the kiss breaks and she rests her forehead against his. And just like that, Sandor has his little bird, the ray of sunshine he can now call his wife.

 

The first few hours of being Sandor’s wife are an utter whirlwind, and she is so grateful for the time they stood face to face reciting their vows, because time stood still for them then, the whole world hanging between the tick and tock as they looked at each other. Now it’s a storm. There are photos with Sandor here, photos with family and friends there, wedding party photos back there and now here again for photos with just Sandor, Genna and Sansa. Finally Sandor barks at Margie and Willas to give it a rest, takes her by the hand and pulls her into the house, slamming and locking one of the French doors behind him.

“Finally, two seconds alone with you,” he says, and she feels like a piece of cake he’s eyeing, loves how he takes the three steps to bring himself flush to her. They are standing in a long, narrow room that is half a den, half a billiards room, and she sets her bouquet of roses on the mahogany sofa table, their petals a pop of color against the dark wood.

“Only two seconds, hmm?” she asks, grinning when he kisses her, and it’s so much sweeter here in the cool quiet of this empty house than it is in front of the camera, and she lets slide a whimpering sort of sigh between kisses. Sandor hums in response, the deep dark of him always there to greet whatever light airy thing she offers, and she feels a thrill as it hits her once again, over and over and all day long, that this big bad wolf is  _Mine all mine._

“They’ll only hunt us down if we linger,” he says against her mouth, his scars a ripple and his beard a scruff against her cheek as he carries the kiss down to her ear where his teeth graze the metal of her earring.

“ _There_  you are,” Loras says with the opening of one of the other sets of French doors, and Genna is a baby goat clatter of mary janes on the high gloss terra cotta tile.

“Daddy! Sanny!” she shrieks, and Sandor masters himself a moment with a burning sort of look at her before turning and crouching down in preparation for the launch of a little girl missile into his arms. Sandor hauls her up as he stands, hefts her onto the flex of his forearm where she perches like a little cockatoo in satin and tulle. “We’re married today!” Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are bright, a diamond sparkle to the storm-grey of her father’s eyes, and when Sansa leans in Genna bends down and thunks her forehead to hers, laughing when Sansa exaggerates an  _Owww._

“What happened to  _you,_ ” Sandor says after Loras waves Renly, Willas and Margie into the house and closes the door behind him. Sansa turns in time to see Loras accept Renly’s shaken out pocket square, wipe the side of his face with it, inspecting the cloth before each subsequent daub.

“Ah, well,” Loras says with a smile, patting his sister on the shoulder as she and Willas bend their heads over their high tech expensive cameras, flicking through the photos they’ve taken so far. “Genna got into the cake, and then got the cake onto me,” Loras says, and it’s an ill-suppressed grin Renly gives the little girl, trying his damnedest to glare at her.

“ _Genna_ ,” Sandor says, voice a deep grate that does absolutely nothing to intimidate his daughter. It’s about as effective as trying to scare her with his scars. “Is that true?”

“Loras is pretty covered in it, so I’m going to say yes,” Sansa says, eyeing Genna’s grubby hands with trepidation when she laughs and reaches out for her, and she takes a hasty step back.

“Well,” Genna starts, head tipping to the side as her five year old brain works to whip up an explanation.

“It’s her wedding day too, you know,” Margie says as she sweeps by, camera aimed and clicking away as she passes. “Let her have her cake and eat it, too,” she grins, turning to walk backwards as she takes photo after photo, laughing when Sandor says  _I’m going to spoil the shit out of your kids when they’re born, see how you like it_.

“Come on, go on through,” Renly says, kissing Genna and Sansa on the cheek before jogging after Margie. “I’ll get Emily to announce you in five minutes.”

Sandor sets Genna down, gently swats her on the rump before she’s off like a shot to follow the Tyrells.  Sansa has the luxury of a solo walk with him, hand in hand, towards the tent set up in Renly and Loras’s front yard where it’s all manicured grass, green as velvet from pumped irrigation. It’s a roughly circular patch of land, surrounded by the rich brown soil and fluffy green vines that stud the property from the side of the hill all the way down to where it bottoms out into blonde grassland. And now it’s full of people and music, strands of paper lanterns dipping and swaying from tree branches and tall, shadowy cyprus all the way to the eaves of the house, a big white tent smack in the center of the yard with clusters of patio and lawn furniture dotting the soft green grass.

“It’s like a fairy tale,” she says with a smile, her eyes unable to take it all in now that it’s in all its glory. She saw the setup earlier when they came in to finish getting ready before stealing away into the guest bedroom but now it is breathtaking with the sun about to tuck itself behind the mountains on the horizon, with the lanterns lit up and the glow of chandeliers and tealights coming from inside the tent.

Sandor glances towards the festivity before smiling down at her, and though there’s music and laughter and the buzz of excitement spilling out, there’s nobody milling around outside. They are alone once more, maybe for the last time until they shut themselves up in the renovated guesthouse down the hill to lay true claim on one another. He lifts her hand in his, high above her head, and she smiles as he twirls her with the turn of his wrist, and she feels like a queen on a high hill bathed in a sunset, in a look of love given to her by her husband. He does not say anything, merely lowers his head to kiss her after she completes her revolution, her billowed out dress falling back to brush the tops of her feet.

“I love you,” she breathes, cupping his face with her hands, holding him close as he returns the sentiment, her thumb a light rub across the plain of his scars, making him close his eyes and deepen the kiss so deliciously she suddenly wishes the party was over.

 “Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to announce our bride and groom, the couple of the evening: Sansa and Sandor Clegane,” the DJ says, her voice an amplified feminine boom from within the tent.

“Here we go,” Sandor says, squeezing her hand and tugging her close to his side as they cross the grass, Sansa walking on her tiptoes to keep the heels of her shoes from sinking into the grass. “Ready, Mrs. Clegane?”

“I was born ready, Mr. Clegane,” Sansa says with a nudge to his arm, and he laughs.

“And to think I used to hate you calling me that. Suddenly it doesn’t sound so bad anymore,” he says as they step into the tent amidst an explosion of applause and cheers, catcalls and wolf whistles, as loud and joyful as a fireworks display.

 

“He hasn’t taken his eyes off of her all night, have you noticed? He’s hopeless for her,” Jeyne says to Myranda, and while it’s likely a combination of candles and champagne that makes it impossible to keep the wistful dreaminess out of her voice, she supposes she can also blame watching her best friend dance to Tom Waits with her new husband as well. 

Randa and she are still sitting at the head table just in front of the dance floor, though the rest of it is empty save for abandoned jackets and clutch purses and centerpieces of tea lights and flowers that dot the long banquet table. It’s a tented little world of light and glass and the scent of roses, the warm smell of women’s perfume and the barking laughter of merriment. It’s a world divided now by the increasing number of people on the dance floor who block the rest of the round tables on the other end of the tent, and Jeyne is wishing she had someone to dance with too. The entire day has all been impossibly romantic, this entire vacation out west, even though now she’s sitting watching everyone else dance with her chin in one hand and her nearly empty glass in the other. Myranda laughs, bumps her with a shoulder, making her elbow skate across the table, making her flick a glare her way.

“Look at you, mooning over everybody already paired up,” she says with a toss of her glossy brown hair.

“I just want to dance,” she says.

 “This is a _wedding,_ Jeyne. The classic place for a hook up, so try to look for the single guys, not all the couples already paired up. They do make the guys pretty nice out here, I have to say,” she says, watching Jaime Lannister at the bar as he tucks a bottle of champagne in the crook of his right arm, using his one hand to clutch two flutes together as he makes his way across the dance floor. Myranda sighs when he does a little shimmy and knocks his hip against Margie’s, who is currently being flung around the dance floor by her husband Bronn.

“He’s married, Randa. Well, at least I think so,” Jeyne says when Myranda asks if she’s positive. “Sandor’s older so his friends are older, and they’re all going to be taken. Unless you count that guy, Mr. Selmy,” she says, pointing to the white haired, bow legged man in the bolo tie, laughing when her fellow bridesmaid wrinkles her nose.

“I’m not that hard up yet,” she says, scooting her chair back and standing, smoothing her dress down her thighs. “But I definitely need another drink. Want one?” she asks, nodding when Jeyne says _Yes, please._ A Stevie Wonder song comes on and she sighs. _I should really just go up there and dance,_ she thinks. _If Randa won’t dance with me I bet Ygritte would, or Meera._ But then Benjen’s out of his sling so he can lead Meera around the dance floor, and for an older guy with a half-mended broken arm he’s not half bad. _Okay, so maybe Shireen._

“Your tattoos are pretty incredible,” Renly says as he leads Shireen to the dance floor, and Jeyne exhales a sigh in exasperation and surrender. _I’ll dance by my damned self then._ “I’ve never had the gumption to get one of my own. What did you say your name was? All Rickon ever calls you is Shir.” They cut a good rug, Shireen laughing when he spins her out like he’s swing dancing.

“Shireen,” she says over the music and conversation. “Shireen Baratheon,” and Renly pauses mid-dance move, mouth hanging open in what is still a charming grin.

“No shit,” he says. “Let me tell you something,” he laughs, picking up the rhythm again, and she rolls her eyes as they disappear in the bob and to-and-fro of the crowd.

Jeyne glances over at the bar, wondering where Myranda has gone with her champagne, but then she sees Sansa, standing without Sandor in a rare moment of solitude, considering they’ve been attached at the hip since they said _I do_. The bride is a shiny jewel, more priceless than any bauble, her feet aglitter in those shoes and her smile a brilliant match, and she raises her hand when her gaze briefly meets Jeyne’s. She lifts her head out of her hand and waves, freezes in the midst of it when she realizes Sansa is talking to someone else. _Well_ that’s _embarrassing,_ she thinks, sitting back in her chair, but then the tall man standing next to Sansa turns and looks over at her.

Jeyne sucks in a breath.

“Oh my God he’s coming _over_ here,” she whispers to herself, sitting up straight in her chair, having half a mind to check her makeup with the compact mirror in her purse, deciding that is probably the lamest thing she could do. But it’s Willas Tyrell and he’s _cute,_ and it’s impossible sitting still during his painstaking approach. She tosses her hair over her shoulder when he finally limps up to the head table, and she squeezes her fingers together in her lap as she beams up at him.

“Your friend, Randa I think it was, abandoned your cause, or so says the bride,” he says, holding up a second glass of champagne in his hand. She smiles gratefully and thanks him, taking the flute when he extends it towards her, his fingers a brush against hers. It sends a shiver down her back that has nothing to do with the chilled glass in her hand. “Jeyne, right?”

“Thank you so much. Yes, I’m Jeyne. It’s um, it’s Willas, right? Margie’s older brother up at Haygarden?” He bows his head slightly, his hair falling in his eyes for the briefest of moments before he sweeps it back with his free hand, lifts his head to smile at her. It’s charming and amused, and she thinks maybe she could look at him all night long.

“Ah, it’s Highgarden actually. No, no, you were very close,” he says with a laugh when she closes her eyes at her faux pas with a hand to her forehead. “Haygarden is what we call the barn,” he says, and when she laughs at his quip he smiles so deeply she can make out dimples. “Do you mind if I sit with you? I’ve got a bad leg, and when I stand for a long time, you know,” he says, trailing off when she interrupts him.

“Oh my God, of _course,_ I am so sorry, I’m such an idiot. Please,” she says, and together they push out the chair Myranda was in earlier, his hand on the back, hers on the seat. “I should have known better, Margie mentioned it in passing just the other day,” she says, listening as he briefly touches on the accident before asking her about her work as an au pair over in New York. It’s an easy conversation, about as difficult as unwinding a silk ribbon. Soon they’re talking about everything under the sun, leaning in to one another and laughing at each other’s jokes, nodding emphatically at each other’s hardships. It’s as decadent as eating ice cream, sitting here with him, this man with the easy smiles and the warm gaze, with hair long enough to sink her fingers into and posture that’s straight backed and strong despite his injury. She forgets all about dancing until Randa interrupts them with a sudden reemergence from the crowded dance floor, her chest heaving as she leans over the table towards her and Willas.

“I met this guy, Podrick,” she says, panting from evident and provocative exertion, judging by the way her dress hangs off of one shoulder. “He says he’ll dance with both of us, if you’re still itching for a spin on the dance floor,” she says, eyes lighting up when she finally devotes some attention to Willas and sees how attractive he is, as he smiles politely down to his glass of champagne. Jeyne resists the urge to rest a hand on his am, instead tosses her hair again and fixes Randa with a firm look and a broad smile.

“No thanks, I don’t feel like dancing,” she says, glaring at her friend when she opens her mouth to protest. “Seriously, go enjoy Podrick,” she says, laughing when Myranda says _Oh, I plan on it,_ spinning on her heel to find her target.

“If you want to dance, go ahead, honestly,” Willas says, but she shakes her head no and pulls her chair closer to his. His gaze lifts from his glass up to her, his eyebrows arched in mild surprise at her refusal.

“Not a chance. This is the most fun I’ve had all summer, right here with you,” she says with a blush and a dip of her head, hair falling in her face as she tries to cover up her slip by explaining that her charges are going to boarding school in the fall and that she’s out of a job, that she’s been pretty bummed until coming to Sonoita. “At least it means I’ve got some time to myself. I didn’t um, I didn’t even book a return flight. Not yet, anyhow,” she says with a smile and a one shouldered shrug when she looks back up at him. He’s got a fox’s smile on his face, as slow-burn steady as it is enigmatic, but when he lifts his hand and brushes her hair from her eyes with the backs of his fingers, she thinks she gets it. “Which is starting to sound better and better, ever since um, you know,” she says.

 “Yeah,” he says with a nod, gaze dropping from her eyes to her mouth, and Jeyne lets out a long, slow sigh when he leans in. “I know.”

 

“I suppose _that’s_ why you were so adamant that Willas take the bridal party pictures, huh, little bird?” Sandor asks towards the end of the night, gesturing with his glass of bourbon towards the head table where Jeyne and Willas have been talking all night, up until a while ago when one or the other finally went for it.

It’s been a long and exhausting night but one he has enjoyed, more than any evening he’s spent at a wedding before, full of toasts and kisses, laughter and dancing. _So much damned dancing,_ he thinks, wondering how in the hell these ladies do it on four inch spikes; his feet are killing him and there’s barely any heel to his shoes. But here stands his bride beside him, and with his hand resting on her hip he can feel her still tapping her toes to the music. She is tireless, effortless, perfect. He kisses her temple before draining the last of his bourbon, setting the glass on a nearby empty table.

“Oh wow, they’re _kissing,_ ” Sansa says, and when Margie drifts by with a tired expression and an iced tea his new wife snares her by the arm. “Look, Margie, _look,_ I pulled a you!” and he throws his head back and laughs. As tired as the mother to be has to feel this close to midnight, she still brightens considerably to see Sansa’s sly handiwork.

“Well _done,_ Sanny! I sort of sent your friend Randa barreling towards Pod earlier. Poor bastard, I don’t think he fully understands what he’s gotten himself into,” she says, shooting Renly a dirty look when he knocks his shoulder into hers. He’s got his other arm slung across Shireen’s shoulders and they’re both nursing shots of tequila. Judging by her giggling and Renly’s slow drawl grin he’s got going on, it’s not their first round.

“So lookit who I found,” Renly says, gesturing to the tattooed woman tucked against his side. His tequila sloshes, some of it dribbling over the rim of his glass, and Loras is a well dressed blur as he sweeps past and between them, snatching the shot from his husband’s hand so deftly Renly doesn’t even notice. “I have decided to make her my sister. She’s a Barath’n too, you know.”

“No relation,” Shireen says with another giggle, knocking back what’s left of her shot. Sansa slips from his side and he is a distracted look her way until he sees her at the bar asking for two waters. He grins, turns feigned interest back to the drunken wonders.

“Well, no relation ‘til now, because she is my sister. I finally have a sister too, Lor,” he bellows, turning his head this way and that to discern where Loras ran off to. Shireen laughs with a tipsy sigh, and considering they’re both dressed in black with matching dopey expressions, Sandor thinks they could likely pass as siblings.

 “I think he got me drunk,” Shireen says when she tries to sip from her empty shot glass, staring down at it with one eye closed before leaning hard against Renly. “Ugh, my shoes are killing me,” and she drops several inches when she takes them off.

“I wish someone would get _me_ drunk,” Rickon says with a scowl, slinking up to them all with his hands in his pockets. “I tried to get a beer three times but dad busted me every time.”

“You’re DD and you’re underage. And now little brother, you have a girlfriend to sober up,” Sansa says smartly, handing him one of the waters as she manually wraps Renly’s hand around the other. “You, Mr. Wedding Planner, drink this. You, husband,” she says, rounding on him with heady closeness, giving his silk tie a light tug, his mouth a hungry kiss, one that calls his own appetites up to the forefront of his mind. “You’re coming with me.” She’s loose limbed and warmed up from champagne, can tell by the sway of her hips when she leads him away, and the way he is so effortlessly snagged from her grasp.

“Oh no you don’t,” Myranda says just as they’ve nearly crossed the dance floor, and with a decisive tug to his and Sansa’s clasped hands she drags an equally confused and reluctant Sandor back to the center of the floor. “I haven’t danced with the groom yet,” she says, snaking her arms up and around his neck.

It’s repellant to him, a flash to the life he had before Sansa and her honest warmth, her true-to-the-marrow love and guileless smiles, but this is a wedding and a party and he’s unsure of protocol, here. _Where the fuck do I put my hands,_ he thinks, and he is about to set them awkwardly on her shoulders when Sansa rescues him. His wife wraps a hand lightly around one of Myranda’s wrists and gingerly pulls her off of him, and the bridesmaid is a checked stagger as she sidesteps away.

“Ex _cuse_ me,” Sansa says, blue eyes hot and angry when she glares at her friend, “but _he_ is _mine,_ sugar. Go wrap your arms around someone else, why don’t you, hmm?”

“Oh get over it, it’s a _wedding,_ Sansa, it’s supposed to be fun,” Myranda says, tugging Pod by the lapel as she traipses out of the tent, telling him loudly that she wants to go stick her feet in the fountain. Loras materializes from nowhere in hot pursuit.

“Well, well, well,” Sandor says later when they’re walking across the grass in the dark, his suit jacket over her shoulders and her exquisite heels dangling from his fingers.

They were bombarded by a handful of last minute well-wishers back in the tent, even Willas and Jeyne coming up for air in time to say goodnight. Talisa and Ygritte were all hugs and congratulations, Meera and Shireen a handful of giggling obscenities while Margie dozed at one of the tables. Bronn was all claps-on-the-back and _Don’t let her down now, buddy,_ Rickon and Robb not much better though Jojen and Bran were far more reserved. But now they are alone and for the rest of the night, and it’s blissfully quiet out here, away from the cacophony of celebration and music and booze.

“Well, well, well, _what_ ,” she says, clinging to his arm as she tries to pick her way over a graveled section of landscaping in her bare feet. He stops her, stoops down and sweeps her up, hefting her in his arms until he’s comfortable, and with his sleeves rolled up to his elbow he has the tickle and graze of her dress as it drapes over his forearm.

“Nothing, unless you count you getting jealous back there,” he says, and she gasps predictably and says _Not in the slightest._ “Oh yeah you were,” he says, eyes nearly closing as she toys with the ends of his hair. He sets her down on her feet when they’re on the front porch and hands over those bridal shoes of hers. When she reaches for the doorknob and pulls open the door, he stretches his arm out above her shoulder, pushes it shut again. “Admit it, sunshine, you were _jealous_ ,” he murmurs when she turns around and leans against the heavy wooden door, her head resting just beside the hand he still has pressed to the door.

“Fine, so what if I was,” she says to his mouth before looking up at him. She’s wicked in the midnight hour, dark eyed and parted mouth, her hand a trail down the center of his chest. Her gaze follows her fingers a moment before lifting back to his. “You _are_ mine, and I don’t have to share anymore.” Her words excite him, kick up his pulse, make him suddenly impatient.

“When did you ever share me to begin with,” he says, stepping into her, pinning her to the door with his body and both hands against the door on either side of her. “Hmm?”

“Well, never, I guess,” she whisper, breath hitching in the back of her throat when he lowers his head to hers with just a sliver of air between their mouths. Sansa lifts her chin, tilts her head back to regain control of the situation and maybe to kiss him, but Sandor pulls back just a fraction and just in time. “But still,” she says, and then she gasps when he lowers a hand to draw up the fabric of her dress, bunching it along her thigh.

“Still, what? Tell me, Sansa,” he says, kissing the corner of her mouth, the edge of her jaw, leaning into her in a sort of one armed push up against the door, reaching down and gathering her dress until his fingers graze her skin.

“You’re still mine, more so now than before, I mean,” she says, and she must be standing on her tiptoes when she arches her back, because her breasts lift up and against him as his palm flattens against the soft flesh of her thigh.

“What’s this?” he gruffs against her earlobe when he feels something lacy, something elastic around her thigh. He pulls it with his index finger, draws it until it’s taut and lets it snap back against her skin, making her whimper.

“A garter. Oh my God, Sandor, please,” she says, her head a thump against the door when he drops his other hand to her hip, reaches down to gather up more dress. There’s miles and miles of the stuff, but then he’s got the warmth of her other thigh beneath his hand.

“Is there one of those on this leg too?” he asks the side of her throat before kissing it, grazing her with his teeth.

“No, just the, oh, just the one, for the um, oh my God, for the borrowed-blue-old-new thing, all inclusive,” and he’s _got_ her now, hot taffy in his hands when she bends one knee, lifting it so he can cradle her leg in his hand, the back of her thigh a curve of warmth resting in his palm.

She jumps once from the squeeze he gives her, again at the sound of a car door slamming somewhere down the hill. As loathe as he is to let her go, as well as he knows that her parents have taken Genna back to their bed and breakfast with them, he still isn’t keen on being discovered by another one of her – their – family members. Sandor reluctantly lets go of her dress, two handfuls of wisp and weightless gauze that leave his hands empty.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she says, unable to suppress a squeal and shriek when he grunts at her and advances. “Come and get it, if you can catch it,” she says, reaching behind and opening the door, and she is a peal of laughter that echoes in the empty house as she sprints for the French doors leading out to the back patio and guesthouse down the hill.

“Watch me,” he says, making a run for it, before she makes it to one of the French doors he’s got her swept up in his arms again, another heft before he hauls her up and over his shoulder, a bride for his prize, a wife for the rest of his days.

 

They barely make it inside the guesthouse before completely coming undone, two feral things grasping at one another, hissing out _Christ_ _I love you_ and _Hurry, please, hurry_ to one another. Her fingers loosen his tie as he kisses the breath from her body, and once he’s free of it and his shirt he turns her around by the shoulders, drags the calloused pads of his fingers down her back to the ties of her dress, tucked in and hidden from view. He groans as he draws out the laces, just as she sighs from the tantalizingly slow release from her confines.

“So pretty,” he says as much to himself as to her, his fingers tugging, wresting, hungry, until the job is done, until her dress hangs open and he’s singlehandedly pulled every pin from her hair, dragging it through his fingers until he lets it fall against her back. “So, so pretty,” he says as he pushes it off of her shoulders, letting it pool on the floor around her bare feet, and he’s all hungry animal when she turns in her slip to face him.

He’s warm when she rests her hands on his chest, the cotton ribbing of his undershirt soft to the touch, but it’s not that she’s wanting, it’s him. He lifts his arms obediently when she tugs the undershirt up the breadth of him, over his shoulders and his head, loose hair a tousled mane one she’s tossed it to the floor by the rest of his clothes. She admires him as openly as he’s looking at her, brushing a touch across the tree on his ribs, the constellation on his shoulder and the dog on his other bicep. All works of art on the finest canvas she’s ever laid eyes on. Sandor’s hands skim her upper arms as she steps into him and presses a kiss to his chest, just over his heart.

“You caught me, Sandor, so now you can come and get me,” she says, tipping her head back and smiling to the ceiling when the floss-thin straps of her slip are hooked in his fingers, dragged down her arms, the thin satin a light drag down her breasts and hips until it settles on top of her wedding gown. He crouches down, lifts first her left foot and then the right as he sweeps her clothes from the floor, tossing them behind him onto the loveseat by the door. When he stands she’s at the ready, his belt unbuckled, his pants and boxer briefs soon nothing more than a puddle of fabric for him to step out of, but even as he stands naked before her, he does not move save to shake his head.

“You made me a promise, Sansa,” he says, moonlight from the window above the bed painting his long back when he turns and picks up the pair of shoes resting on an end table by the guesthouse door. Sansa laughs, a breathless thing as he approaches her with the heels of her glittering shoes pinched between his fingers. “I get you in _these,_ ” he says, so intensely she gusts out an _Ohh,_ backing up until the mattress hits the back of her bare legs.

He makes her lie back in nothing but a pale blue garter, stretching out on a bed scattered with rose petals, and he slides the shoes onto her bare feet as carefully as if they could turn to dust with the slightest mismanagement. When she bends one knee and digs the stiletto of her shoe into the mattress, Sandor nods, runs a hand across his mouth and his bearded chin, looking for all in the world as if he is appraising artwork. The thought makes her bite her lip. He folds his arms across his chest and studies his handiwork, making gooseflesh crop up in waves wherever his eyes roam, and Sansa clenches her jaw in anticipation of how his hands will feel when they retrace the path his gaze makes now. Only when she says _Please_ does he hum in approval and unfold his arms and plant a knee between her calves, his hands on either side of her hips as he moves up the length of her body until he’s between her thighs.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he says as he kisses her, tastes her, works her over with nothing more than a hand on her breast and his tongue on hers. “Let me feel those shoes of yours, Sansa,” and she moans and writhes, does as he bids with a lock of her ankles at the base of his spine, makes him hiss when she says _Yes, Mr. Clegane._

“I’ve wanted this,” she sighs, whines when he lowers himself on top of her, poised at the ready, an aching teasing touch that he lets linger as he kisses her, as she runs her nails down his back and as he dips his fingers inside her. “Oh God, Sandor,” she says, arching into him when finally he moves his hand and pushes himself inside her, “I’ve wanted this day for so long, this night.”

“I never knew,” he says with a shudder and a slow slide of his hips, a rocking tilt up into her that makes her eyes roll back in her head, and she is trying to find the words to ask him why he never knew how much she loved him when he speaks again. “I never knew,” he says, the thrusting of his hips serving as punctuation as he rises up, hands to the mattress as he looks down at her.  “I never knew. I never knew I could have this and now it’s mine.”

“You have it, you have me,” she says, raking back his hair with her fingers to his scalp, hands sliding down the nape of his neck to his shoulders, nails digging in and dragging him back down to her. “You have me forever because I’m yours.” He tells her _Yes_ and swears he’s hers, calls her his wife and moves inside her until an orgasm takes her over, makes her squeeze her legs and her body around him. There are rose petals clinging to the backs of her thighs and the sweep of his hand down to her hip and up to her garter make them fall back to the bedspread, and the crush of them fills the room with heady perfume. It is like being drugged, to be so consumed by her senses and by her husband.

Sandor grits his teeth and groans, pants out his breaths as he keeps the rock and push and the thrust and slide steady and slow, that brutalizing pace of his he manages so well, and even as the throb of climax fades she feels the draw and coax of him for more. When he calls out her name she can feel the patience waver and crumble as intensity takes its place, and it’s all hunger and thirst, want and _take_ as his finesse is replaced with a rough greed that makes her want to come again. Moments later he loses himself, drops kisses to her breasts before he shudders and his hips pump forward, and slaked as she is she cries out his name, head thrown back into the pillow.

Sleep steals them both away soon after though not for very long; he complains of being an old man but that alleged fact doesn’t keep him away from her sometime in the middle of the night. He moves behind her as they stretch out on their sides, pinning her to his chest with a warm, firm hand just beneath her breasts, his thumb a rub against her nipple as he whispers in her ear over and over. He makes her come as he calls her his wife, asks her to say it back and she does, sliding his hand down, down, down, calls him hers, calls him husband as he thrusts into her so hard it makes the bed move. _Come for me,_ she says, and he lets his orgasm chase hers, hand lifting from between her legs to turn her face back towards him so he can kiss her.

They fall asleep again with the covers drawn to their waists, his arm a protective, possessive drape across her chest, his knees tucked behind hers, two pieces locked perfectly in place together.

It’s a rare morning when she wakes before he does but here they are, Sansa resting on her belly with her arms folded under her pillow as she gazes at him, asleep here beside her on his back. She’s been up for fifteen or twenty minutes, has already sneaked out of bed to use the bathroom and brush her teeth, to fully wash off her makeup and comb out her hair. It’s a charming little guesthouse, one they paid little attention to last night, but she appreciates now how their overnight bags await them by the bed, how when she stole a look she found champagne and orange juice, cream cheese and bagels and lox inside the mini-fridge in the corner by the loveseat. Early morning sunlight streams in and paints the room with watercolor paleness, though Sandor is either too tired or too used to daylight for such a thing to rouse him from his slumber.

 _We’re married._ Sansa closes her eyes a moment, wonders if this feeling is peace or thrill, ecstasy or contentment, and she decides it’s all of it.

He truly does look like a younger man, shorter hair a carefree fling across his good cheek and over his closed eyes, but the slackness of sleep might lend to that boyish look too. God knows the rest of him is certainly all man, the rise and fall of his broad chest, the tattoos and hair as much hallmarks of adulthood as the muscles beneath them. It’s a fine view for her on the day after their wedding, and she is still gazing at him when finally he turns his head towards the ceiling and inhales deeply, a slow breath that expands his rib and makes his chest rise. Sandor’s eyes open on the exhale, close once more before he turns and looks at her.

“You’re still here?” he says with a roll of his eyes before his eyelids slide shut, and she scoffs, swats his side with the back of her hand, making him laugh. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I’d be devastated if you weren’t,” he says.

“Count your lucky stars I am, there’s bagels and lox inside the mini fridge,” she says with a huff, rolling onto side and resting her head in her hand. “I mean, you’re great and all,” she says now he’s the one to grumble and mutter, snap and snarl, dragging her with an arm to his chest.

“We’re married, woman, you’re stuck with me,” and she’s happy to hear it, that smug surety of his words when just last night there was that final ghost of the past coming to haunt him. Sandor runs his fingers through her hair when she repositions herself and rests her head on his chest, his heart a sweet sleepy drum beneath her ear. “Are there really bagels in there?”

Sansa laughs.

“Yeah, you big old bear, and there’s stuff for mimosas too,” she says, and now she has a _real_ view of him, naked as a blue jay as he squats down in front of the fridge with his back to her, pulling out their luxury breakfast. They eat in bed, grinning and drinking champagne and orange juice out of plastic flutes while they lick their fingers, and she devours two thirds of the smoked salmon while her salt of the earth cowboy husband sticks to bread and cream cheese. She’s drowsing after a fully belly and two mimosas, but she opens her eyes when she feels the bed move, can feel the shift of his weight as he gets up. The sun strikes the metal of his wedding ring when he comes back to bed with a manila envelope in his hand, is a flash of light on tungsten when he climbs back into bed, drawing the covers up to his hips.

“So, little bird, I got you a wedding present,” he says, deep voice a rough scratch as it so often is when he talks so quietly. All the same her eyes open wide with wonder and a brief flare of dismay.

“Are you kidding me? I didn’t get you anything, baby,” she says, sitting up and scooting back to rest her shoulders against the headboard. “What is this?” she says, picking up the manila envelope he has placed on the bedspread between them. He is enigmatic smiles and a bare shouldered shrug, a lock of hair falling in his eyes even as he ties back the rest at the nape of his neck.

“Open it,” he says, all nonchalance and devil may care, as if he’s handing her a landscaping bill and not the first wedding gift they’ve ever exchanged. She draws the sheet up over her breasts, tucking it around her like a toga, and pinches open the metal prong on the back of the envelope.

“Seriously though, I didn’t _get_ you anything, I feel awful now,” she murmurs, pulling out a thick packet of papers held together with a small binder clip. The pages are crisp and covered in black ink and blank spaces, rows and rows of text, formal looking titles on the header of each sheet.

“This is more a present for the both of us, honestly,” he says quietly, scooting closer towards her, back to the headboard as he gazes at them over her shoulder. She flips through them, skimming the text, heart in her throat all of a sudden as she catches first one word and then another, and another and another.

“Sandor, _what_ the,” she starts, her breath shuddering out and closing off whatever other words she was going to say, and he rescues her from the moment, kissing her temple before pointing at the header on the first page.

“They’re adoption papers, sunshine.”


	9. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Final picset](http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/116655296448/kiss-him-back-chapter-9-epilogue-feels)

September, 2017

 

It’s not yet sunrise but he is woken anyways as he so often is these days, and while there is a bone-deep, ever-increasing exhaustion with each passing day, there is also a mounting excitement. It slathers over him every morning, coats of paint on unfinished wood that is eternally hungry for more. He blinks up at the ceiling, not quite whitewash bright yet in this fuzzy, static-screen predawn light, the room all muted undertones save for the blinking red lights that tell his eyes what his ears already know. There is a shift beside him, a roll of a sweet, soft body from within a burrow of covers and pillows, and he looks to his right.

“I got it, I’m up,” Sansa says, voice deep and cracked with fatigue, and he hauls himself up into a sitting position, looking down at his wife. A little over two years of marriage and it’s still a happy sight to see her curled up beside him, although his heart goes out to her at the moment. She must have come back to bed with her hair still done up in a ponytail, judging from the tangle it’s in, and she fell back asleep before taking off her jersey bathrobe. Sandor strokes her hairline with his thumb, smiles at the kitten grunt she makes, already half asleep again.

“No, little bird, you stay, I’ll get it. Try and get some more sleep. I’ll come get you later,” he says, huffing a tired laugh when she moans and groans her gratitude and her _I love yous,_ twisting onto her other side with her back to the windows _._ He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, dropping his head as he stretches his back like a bow, feels the stretch of sore muscle, the ache of working in the dirt all day and being up half the night to boot.

The concrete floors are cooling the more they ease into autumn, and he pulls a shirt over his head and shoulders as he makes his way down the dark hallway. He runs his fingers along Genna’s closed bedroom door, careful not to disturb the numerous drawings and gold-starred homework assignments she’s been so proud of ever since starting second grade three weeks ago. _Second grade already,_ he thinks with a shake of his head as he quietly twists the door knob and steps into Sansa’s old office.

“Hey, buddy,” he whispers, his heart a leap and spin in his chest when the squalling turns to that gurgling coo he still can’t get over. “You’re up early again. Wonder where you got that from, huh,” he says, gripping the edge of the crib as he looks down at his three month old son.

He’s a little glowworm in that swaddle Sansa is so good at, while he himself is a mess of thick fumbling fingers and blankets; more than once he has threatened resorting to using those clips Sansa buys for their bags of tortilla chips. Sandor leans over, folding his forearms on the rail, watching their child squirm and gaze up at his mobile of puppy dogs. It is a marvel to him, this baby of theirs, something that resides just on the edge of comprehension for him. He understands conception, knows plenty about biology and anatomy, the science behind it all, but he’d be lying to himself if he did not admit to the miraculous, here. Where there was nothing, there is something, a little life here in a swaddling blanket covered in teddy bears and frogs. Where it was once an office for Sansa, now it is a baby’s bedroom. Where it was an empty house, now it is full.

“Buh,” Jonn says, following up with a string of precious nonsense, and if Sandor knew how to spell it he’d have it tattooed on his chest, right beside his daughter’s name. He grins down at him, lifts a hand from the railing to rest it on his son’s stomach, giving him a little bowlful-of-jelly jiggle, making him smile his gummy smile.

“Okay, that’s it,” Sandor says, unable to help himself, and he straightens to pick up his baby, bringing him up to his chest with a hand under his diapered rump, a hand against the duck dander fluff of his auburn hair. They managed to add another carbon copy Tully to the pile, though Jonn’s last name is Clegane; he’s more excited than he can likely admit out loud, to see a miniature Sansa grow up before his eyes, all clever blue eyes and laughter, sprays of freckles and hair to rival a sunset.

“Gahdabuhbuhdah,” Jonn says as he gets his diaper changed, and Sandor grins despite the mess he has to clean up, baby belly warm under his hand as he twists to chuck the dirty wipes in the diaper trash can or whatever Sansa calls it. He snaps his fleece onesie back into place once it’s done, leans over low enough that his grown out hair tickles his son’s cheeks, and wonders what devil he sold his soul to, to end up with such a life. “Guh,” Jonn says, little fist lifting and opening in time to snag his father’s hair with a yank, and Sandor would wince if he didn’t enjoy it so much.

“Come on, buddy, let’s give your mother some time before she feeds you. Christ knows you keep her up enough through the night,” he says, lifting the infant back to his chest as he crosses the room to the window, tugging down the blinds with a finger to gauge the time. It’s brightening outside, no longer a world of grey fuzz, and Sandor nods. “Time to shine, chief, let’s go.”

Sandor shrugs one-armed into his blue Pendleton, his son’s hand still snared in his loose hair, shifts the baby over to get his other arm in, and he buttons him up inside before stepping outside. There’s a nip to the air but it’s not quite cold, breezy but not quite windy, and he sits heavily on the bench, his boy a wriggle on his chest, head a curious, bobbling swivel. He makes some adjustments from within the jacket until Jonn is facing forward and then settles back with a sigh. His eyes burn from fatigue but he is still smiling as he looks to the eastern sky set aglow, as he feels his son’s feet kick against his hand that’s supporting him against the trunk of his body.

It’s peaceful until there is the sound of a dog collar jingling and a low thud, followed by a shriek and squeal of _Sanny where’s my backpack,_ the sound of Sansa’s yawning tumbling early morning reply as she walks past the open front door on her way to make coffee.

“Morning, you two. How are my boys?” she asks, and he turns, gazes back over his shoulder. She’s changed into a fresh bathrobe and has undone her hair, letting it fall on either side of her face, and she leans against the doorframe as if it’s the only thing keeping her on her feet. He wonders how he ever considered her a girl, anything less than a woman, but then he knows her utterly now when back then he didn’t know her at all. Sandor glances back down to their son.

“Hey, sunshine. We’re good,” he says with a grin. “Just, you know,” and he tips his head towards the sky, making her smile. It’s sleepy and beautiful and worn out, faded flannel and soft on the edges, and he has half a mind to invite her out to sit, but then there is the plastic sound of something clattering to the floor following by a wet sort of splash and an _Uh oh, Lady._ Sansa laughs and shakes her head when Sandor half stands.

“No, don’t worry, you’ve got him, so I’ve got this, baby. Tell the pink lemonade I said hey,” she smiles, and he watches as she disappears into the house, listens to Genna make excuses as Sansa shoos Lady away from what is apparently a spilled bowl of cereal and milk.

“And they say boys are messy,” he chuckles, turning back to his task at hand, this lesson in the earth and the sky. Jonn is a babbling wiggle, but Sandor clears his throat and points to the sky, and whether the baby looks at his finger or towards the eastern bowl of the sky, he’s not sure, but they are both still when day begins to break.

“All right, now,” he murmurs. “You keep your eyes on that black line of horizon over there, Jonn. You’re about to see something that will greet you for the rest of your days, no matter where you are. Though I promise you, son, wherever you are or whoever’s with you, I’ll always be here looking at the same old sun you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who has kept on reading, who has just started reading with this one, or whatever. AO3 has the best folks, and I legit could not have completed this crazy, long ass rambling world without your motivation and support, your kudos and comments and helpful reviews. I love you all, and am just so grateful and honored that you guys have come along with me. Viva Sonoita. XOXOXOXOXO


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